If you want to get away with murder in the Greater Washington area, your best bet is to commit your crime in Prince George’s County, where police have caught less than half of the county’s killers in recent years.
But having the lowest homicide case closure rate in the region doesn’t mean Prince George’s streets are the most dangerous.
Prince George’s County police spokeswoman Sharon Taylor said that although the county has at its best, in recent years, closed 49.6 percent of its murder cases, the number of homicides has gone down since 2005.
That’s not the case in the District of Columbia, where police have raised the homicide closure rate from about 40 percent in 2000 to about 70 percent at the close of 2007, but have struggled to keep the number of homicides from climbing.
In fact, no sooner had the District solved 60 percent of its homicides in 2006 — the same year there was a 10-year low in homicides — than the number of killings began to climb. By 2007 they were up 7 percent from the year before. And just last week, as District officials touted the solving of four slayings in 24 hours, a string of killings pushed the 2008 count ahead of where it was this time last year.
When District police officials announced 2007s, 70 percent case closure rate, Police Chief Cathy Lanier described it as the result of a “perfect storm” of administrative changes, hard work and luck.
Prince George’s and the District, officials said, tend to have similar circumstances surrounding their homicides — often, the slayings are at night, the victim doesn’t know his killer, and if there are witnesses, they fear retribution from a looming criminal element.
Other jurisdictions such as Montgomery and Arlington counties have far fewer homicides, and when someone is killed, the killer often knows the victim, leaving a trail of evidence for police to follow, officials said. However, in those counties, one unsolved homicide can decimate the county’s percentage of those it did solve.
In recent years, as the District has dug in on boosting its case closure rate, Prince George’s has focused on lowering the crime rate, particularly since the 2005 spike in homicides, when 152 died. That’s meant hiring more officers to police the streets, sometimes at the cost of losing veteran detectives from the crime-solving mix, Police Chief Melvin High said earlier this year.
“The closure rate can be a roller coaster ride,” said Lt. Mike Straughn, acting assistant commander of Prince George’s criminal investigations department, “It can be static for a little bit, but one homicide, or a string of homicides, and the percentages are blown.”
