Philadelphia is solving homicides at the fastest rate in 40 years. Here's how

0:00Gun violence got very bad during the pandemic. This was true across the country, but this is how it sounded to Philadelphia Police Lieutenant Dennis Rosenbaum at the time. My phone goes off all night long. Triples, quadruples, quintuples, one after another, one after another. He means triple shootings, quadruple shootings. Michael Forrest saw firsthand the consequences of many of those shootings. He's a funeral director in West Philly. Emotionally, physically, the time, effort, dealing with the families, their emotions. as they unpack their anger issues, the regrets, the guilt, and they all come and they put it in my lap.

0:41In 2021, he told member station WHYY that he tried not to fixate on everything he saw at his job. I mean, I would have PTSD. I couldn't do it. You go home and you reset. That year, 2021, Philadelphia would see 562 homicides, It's the worst year on record. And as the homicide rate rose, the homicide clearance rate, which measures how many of these crimes are solved, fell. Here's Ellie Rushing, a crime reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. It dropped to a historic low of 41.8 percent. So less than half of the city's murders were being solved. But like most U.S. cities, Philadelphia turned a corner.

1:25The homicides dropped a little, then a lot. Here's Mayor Sherelle Parker at her State of Philadelphia address last month. If these current trends continue, you should know that Philadelphia will see the lowest numbers of homicides and shootings in more than a half a century here in our city. And while homicides are going down, the rate at which homicide investigations are solved has gone up. Consider this. It is getting harder to get away with murder in Philadelphia. We look at what's changed and what it means for the people who live there.

2:05From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang.

2:15It's Consider This from NPR. So, Ellie Rushing, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter you just heard from earlier, she and her colleagues have been digging into the crime stats put out by the Philadelphia Police Department. And we compared that with court data to basically fact check the police. The data showed that the homicide clearance rate has bounced between 86 and 91 percent this year, the highest rate since 1984. Some of that was old crimes now being solved, but a lot of it is new crimes getting solved, too. Through August, police arrested a suspect within a week in about a third of the cases this year.

2:55And that's up from just 15 percent of cases three years ago saw an arrest that quickly. I spoke with Rushing about what's driving this improvement. And I started by asking her, what are the consequences of a low homicide clearance rate, like the one Philadelphia saw during the pandemic? When shootings and particularly violent crimes and homicides go unaddressed, it can put a real strain on the police department's relationship with the community. And in Philadelphia, most people who are affected by gun violence are black and brown residents, particularly young men. And so their families can feel like that their killings don't matter and that the police aren't putting enough effort into solving these crimes.

3:33And so then, you know, they won't help them with these cases. And experts have also said that basically arresting shooters prevents them from committing more violence and from ending up even as victims of retaliatory shootings themselves. And it can really deter others of committing other shootings by sending a message of accountability. Well, could one big factor driving improvements in clearance rates be because there are fewer killings in general for police to deal with? So they just have more time to solve murder cases? Definitely. Philadelphia right now is on track to record the fewest number of homicides since the 1960s.

4:15And so this has given detectives dramatically more time to investigate the cases in front of them. I mean, during the pandemic, detectives were handling 10 to 15 cases per year, which is more than twice the workload recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice. And this year, it's half that. And some of this also just comes down to simple math. I want to make sure that's clear, right? When we have dramatically fewer killings this year, even fewer total arrests overall can boost that clearance rate. Totally. Well, your article, it also goes deep into technological improvements within the police department, like better cameras, forensics equipment.

4:52How good are those cameras, by the way? These cameras are incredible. I mean, they can zoom in on the name of a candy bar wrapper that's on the ground or the fine lines of someone's tattoos on their arms or neck. And so in 2024, police said there were about like 3 ,600 of these across the city. This year, there are 7 ,300. And that doesn't even include all of the tens of thousands of other cameras across public transit, private businesses, residents-owned like ring cameras. And so more often than not, police now are catching these shootings on camera. Wow. So these technological innovations are definitely helping police solve cases.

5:32Definitely. And the police department has also installed hundreds of license plate readers across the city. And so if police are looking for a getaway car, they can plug in just the first few letters of that license plate or the whole one or even just a descriptor of the car, like a white infinity. and then they can trace the path of that car and then get that getaway car more quickly and secure really important evidence. But are you hearing from residents about privacy concerns, given there's thousands of cameras everywhere in the city? Do people feel like they're being constantly surveilled?

6:07I haven't necessarily heard that criticism from residents, but there have been concerns raised by defense attorneys as to how police control those cameras. police can actually control them through apps and their phones. And so some defense attorneys have said that the police don't always document how often they use these cameras, particularly for drug investigations. Some critics have said that there's few rules or safeguards against abuse of that system. And they've questioned kind of the lax use of it, particularly by our narcotics unit, which has seen its own fair share of scandals and abuse over the years.

6:41Well, is there an example that comes to mind for you that reflects the greater efforts police are going to in Philadelphia to solve cases? Yeah, I think back to the case of a young man named Trey Crawford, who was 17. He was shot and killed in April of 2022 in Philadelphia. This was a time when, you know, the gun violence was at unprecedented levels and when detectives were juggling dozens of cases that year. You know, initially, Trey's mom told me that she really struggled to connect with the detective on his case. He really called her back, and she felt like he wasn't really trying very hard.

7:15She fought and complained, and then finally the department assigned a new detective to the case. And this detective seemed to make and have the time to investigate her son's death. The detective actually went through the suspect's Instagram records, and they can actually do this remotely. And he found the suspects allegedly talking about killing this young man. He had to review tens of thousands of these Instagram records to piece all of these messages together. It was a manual process that was draining that takes hundreds of hours to do. But those records were really all the evidence that he needed.

7:54And so in April of this year, they arrested and charged three people with Trey's murder. Well, despite the positive developments in homicide clearance rates, it's not that murders are now down to zero. It's not that poverty, gang activity, illegal guns, the drug trade. It's not like all of that is gone. So I am wondering, are residents in Philadelphia perceiving this improvement in clearance rates, at least the people you've been talking to? Do they feel safer? It's hard to say because when we looked at this data, it showed that there are nearly 800 killings that occurred between 2021 and 2023 that have yet to result in an arrest.

8:30And so these are hundreds of families, thousands of people across the city that are left in this purgatory of grief who are longing for answers and accountability. I think the families this year who have seen arrests, obviously their relationship with their detectives and the police department have improved. But there is a lot of work to be done. Indeed. Reporter Ellie Rushing from the Philadelphia Inquirer, thank you so much for your really fascinating reporting. Thank you so much for having me. You heard reporting at the top of this episode from NPR's Martin Costi and Aaron Mosell with NPR member station WHYY in Philadelphia.

9:10This episode was produced by Connor Donovan with audio engineering by Simon Laszlo Jansen. It was edited by Patrick Jaron Watanon. Our executive producer is Sammy Yennegan.

9:24It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.