WASHINGTON — Although no longer the murder capital of the United States, the nation’s capital is witnessing a multi-year spike in homicides, but far fewer of them are being solved.
And for the victims’ families, the issue of unsolved murders cuts deep.
Asiyah Timimi’s husband, Aqueel, was stabbed during a dispute in January 2021 and died a few days later. “You don’t feel safe until they get caught,” Timimi said. “I could walk past the person who killed my husband.”
Natalia Mitchell wants justice for her son Morris, who was fatally shot in March 2022, and closure for herself. A successful arrest of her son’s killer, she said, “won’t bring Morris back, but it would help.”
The percentage of homicides solved by the Metropolitan Police Department has fallen sharply in 2023, putting the city on track to record its lowest so-called “solve rate” or “closure rate” in more than fifteen years.
As of November 13, only 75 of the 244 murders committed this year have been solved by police. If we include the 33 homicides from the previous year that have been resolved so far in 2023, the overall closure rate is approximately 45%. That would be the lowest rate dating back to at least 2007, according to MPD statistics.
Nationally, the average approval rating hovers between 50% and 60%, said Rick Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
A low closure rate, especially in homicide cases, can erode police morale and community trust in police and reduce public cooperation between citizens and police, which is critical to many investigations, said Christopher Herrmann, associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former supervisory crime analyst with the New York Police Department.
“That whole process can go into a downward spiral, where the community no longer trusts the police as much or there is a lack of trust,” he said. “There is much less cooperation between the community and the police. And once the police see a lack of cooperation from the community, some of them will throw up their hands and say, “Why should we worry if no one in the community wants to help?”
Vice Mayor for Public Safety Lyndsey Appiah acknowledged that the closure represents “a sense of justice for the victims.”
Additionally, she said, “The certainty of consequences is a deterrent to crime. It is therefore important that we close and resolve cases as quickly as possible.”
The decline in homicides is just one part of the complex public safety crisis facing the nation’s capital. Appiah bluntly acknowledged the magnitude of the problem in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this year.
“Oxford defines a crisis as a time of intense difficulty, trouble or danger,” she testified. “So I would say there is a crisis.”
Washington’s homicide rate is up 33% this year compared to last year. Violent crimes involving young people are also steadily increasing, as are carjackings, with a US congressman and a United Arab Emirates diplomat among the recent victims.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Appiah cited issues with police staffing and issues with crime scene analysis as possible factors affecting the clearance rate.
This year there are approximately 3,300 agents, compared to 3,800 in 2020.
The MPD is at about 3,300 officers this year, compared to 3,800 officers since 2020 – a decrease of 500 in three years. Police union officials have publicly blamed the D.C. Council for what they say are anti-police policies that have driven out officers and hampered recruitment efforts. However, the mayor wants to increase the number of officers to 4,000.
D.C.’s crime lab, the Department of Forensic Science, also lost its accreditation in the spring of 2021 amid allegations of deficiencies in its analysis. Appiah said the lab hopes to regain its accreditation early next year; In the meantime, the city is outsourcing the crime scene analysis, a process that takes time and money, she said.
Appiah said 10 months into the year is too early to judge the success of murder investigations that could last months or years. And honestly, the MPD just arrested a man in late October for a murder that happened in 2009. In such cases, the arrest counts as part of this year’s clearance rate.
But with just a few weeks left in the year, it would take a remarkable series of successful arrests to prevent 2023 from seeing the lowest homicide rate in more than 15 years.
The impact of these unsolved murders can have a corrosive effect in several directions.
“It devastates the black family, and it can devastate the police department,” said Ronald Moten, a community activist who spent time in federal prison on drug charges in his youth. “It always gives the family a sense of relief when there is closure. It won’t help you heal on its own, but it is part of the healing process.”
Moten’s half-brother was murdered in 1991, during a period when the number of homicides in DC regularly exceeded 400 per year. The case was never solved.
“It hurts because you feel like someone got away with killing your child with no consequences,” Moten said. “That hurts. You want closure and you want someone to be held accountable.”
Preventing this negative cycle from becoming entrenched is one of the city’s top priorities. To close cases, police need residents to help remove violent criminals from their communities, said Appiah, the deputy mayor.
“We need their help. And they need to trust that if they come forward with information and help us, it will move toward accountability,” she said. “If they give us tips about someone involved in a shooting and then that person is back in the community, they’re not going to trust MPD in the same way. … We need the community to help us close cases, and then we need the rest of the system to help keep them safe.”
Timimi, whose son Khalil was shot about six weeks after her husband was stabbed outside Washington in neighboring Prince Georges County, Maryland, now cares for her paralyzed son and runs a charity organization that teaches modern life skills to urban youth.
She said she fears a return to the days when Washington routinely led the nation in killings per capita. Two of her former neighbors have lost children to gun violence in recent years, and in 2021 her godson was caught in the crossfire and killed while home from college due to the national shutdown of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In the ’80s and ’90s, I remember going to a funeral every week,” she said. “And if it goes unresolved, you feel like they’ve forgotten you.”
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Follow Khalil at https://twitter.com/ashrafkhalil.