Shootings are not easy to solve. Guns kill people quickly, without leaving lots of DNA, as stabbings do
past three years Donald McGraw, a Chicago transit-authority worker, has been fighting for justice for his nephew. In September 2019 De’Andre Clark, a 25-year-old aspiring actor, was murdered in Chatham, a neighbourhood in the south of the city, while sitting in his car. In the days afterwards, Mr McGraw, with other family members, went street to street posting flyers asking for information and knocking on doors.
Clark’s murder and the lack of justice for it are sadly common. In the 1960s around 90% of reported murders led to an arrest. The latest data from thepoint to a figure closer to 50%. That does not necessarily mean that clear-up rates have fallen so much. In the 1960s some murders might not have been reported, and others were not really solved, even if somebody was arrested. Yet it seems likely that some of the decline is genuine.
Added to this is an underfunded and sclerotic justice system. Police often complain that prosecutors let violent suspects go, and do not bring charges even in strong cases. Prosecutors counter that the evidence they are brought is often not convincing enough. It is difficult to say who is right, but it seems that the justice system does not help. In Cook County it can take several years to bring cases to trial.
When shootings increase, the number of detectives available does not increase in parallel. So each detective has less time for each case. According to a study by the Police Executive Research Forum in 2019, only around 8% of police officers in the Chicago Police Department, or 1,127 in total, were detectives, a significantly smaller share than in other big cities. Just 128 were devoted to solving murders. Since then, the number of dedicated homicide detectives has increased to 190.
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