When a person is fatally shot in Baltimore, city police say they usually send two homicide detectives to the scene.
If they sent more, they might see a higher closure rate, according to one of the few studies to ever analyze police closure rates.
“Assigning a minimum of three detectives and perhaps four appears to increase the likelihood of clearing [cases],” according to the 2000 National Institute of Justice study, “Clearing Up Homicide Clearance Rates,” written by University of Maryland Criminology Chair Charles Wellford, and James Cronin, now of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington. One Wisconsincity took the unusual step of using 11 detectives to produce a “high clearance rate,” the study states.
“What police do matters,” Wellford told The Examiner. “Traditional thinking is that homicide clearances are a function of the nature of the homicide. But places where you find high clearance rates, they have high clearance rates for all types of homicides, including drug and gang homicides where there are no witnesses.”
Wellford and Cronin analyzed homicide data from 1994 and 1995. In addition to the success of assigning three or four detectives to a case, the criminologists found the following:
» Patrol officers who quickly respond to a scene ? and do a good job once they get there ? make a big difference.
“The first officer on the scene ? a lot of what he did really impacted the success of the case,” Cronin said, adding that an officer?s rounding up of witnesses and securing the crime scene played a big role in successful closures.
Indeed, of 589 closed cases in four cities, including Baltimore, analyzed by the study, 50 percent were solved within a week and 93 percent within a year.
Likewise, Wellford said missteps by these first responders can seriously hurt a murder hunt.
“There are many instances you see mistakes made in the beginning that jeopardize investigations down the stream,” he said.
» Providing detectives take-home cars and flexible overtime yields results, the experts say.
“Most homicides occur in the evening,” Wellford said. “If detectives are assigned to a case have a take-home car and the ability to use overtime to stay with a case, they?re more likely to solve it.”
Baltimore homicide detectives do not get take-home cars.
» Quality computer data and checks matter.
“Agencies with high clearance rates use information systems well,” Wellford said. “Agencieswith low clearance rates don?t. Sharing information within the agencies through these systems turned out to be important.”
Baltimore Police spokesman Matt Jablow said the agency?s computer information personnel are outstanding.
“We have a state-of-the-art computer system,” he said.
Baltimore detectives have cleared 38 of this year?s 129 homicides ? and 61 total cases including murders from last year. Of the 42 homicide detectives on the force, Marvin Sydnor is credited with closing the most of this year?s cases ? three.
Detectives Joon Kim, Frank Miller, Richard Purtell, Charles Bealefeld, Sean Jones, Gordon Carew, and Robert Dohony have each closed two of 2007?s homicides.
Records show that 15 detectives have not solved any homicides from this year.
