Cold Case Nation

Thanks to the Left, Most Murder Cases in the U.S. Go Unsolved

Stories about cold cases—unsolved crimes, especially murders—have long filled the airwaves of TV, streaming and now podcasting.  Tragically, in a nation this large with all too many violent criminals, the creators of such shows have never struggled to find content.  Now, however, such shows have a surfeit of dreadful material to choose from.

That is because, for the first time, more murder cases in America are going unsolved than solved.

After steadily declining for decades, the rate at which murders are solved or "cleared" has officially fallen below 50 percent. Some cities have far lower clearance rates.  Chicago’s murder clearance rate has dropped below 40 percent.  Oakland’s rate is 27 percent. 

This decline in the murder clearance rate has been fairly steady despite amazing advantages in crime-solving technology, including the DNA revolution.  Starting in the 1960s, the rate at which murder cases were solved has slid steadily.  It has decreased from above 90 percent in the 1960s to 71 percent in 1980 to just under 50 percent in 2020.  The last figure comes from two separate analyses of FBI data by independent non-profits.  By comparison, Germany still clears well over 90 percent of its murder cases.  Police are especially struggling in the wake of a sharp increase in homicides in the last three years.

In fact, the murder clearance rate is undoubtedly worse than what’s officially reported due to manipulation of the data.  According to the FBI, a homicide can be cleared by arrest or other means.  This latter “exceptional means” includes the death of a suspect, another jurisdiction’s refusal to extradite someone, or prosecutors refusing to press charges.  A more accurate benchmark for murder clearance rates is the arrest rate.  Using this gauge, one professor found that from 2016 to 2020, the percentage of murders in Chicago involving any type of weapon resulting in at least one arrest was just 33 percent.  In Durham, North Carolina, between 2017 and 2021, just 41 percent of gun-related homicide cases led to at least one arrest.  Left-wing National Public Radio admitted recently, “even some cities now touting modestly improved murder clearance rates, such as Chicago, are really just artificially boosting their clearance numbers through that ‘exceptional means’ clause.”

Hear the cries of the victims who have been denied justice.  One San Francisco mother mourning her lost son told a reporter, “I lived for my son . . . We don’t know who did this, no one knows.  They killed my son and the next day everyone forgot.”  Across the bay in Oakland, Mark Legaspi, a relative of another murder victim said, “I mean it's almost a year.  I would like to know something.  I don't get no answers."  There have been no arrests even though Oakland detectives have security-camera footage and the license plate number of the suspected getaway car, as well as other important evidence.

Leftist Lynch Mobs Scare Off High-Quality Police Recruits

NPR offered a number of explanations for the decline in the murder clearance rate.  They include increased fears of retaliation by witnesses, “chronic police staffing and recruiting problems,” the increase in firearms-related homicides (“which can result in fewer witnesses and less physical evidence”), and “judges, prosecutors and juries have higher evidence and procedure standards than” in decades past.

A couple of these issues can be disposed of quickly.  Fear of retaliation for cooperating with law enforcement is as old as the criminal-justice system itself.  Presumably, a higher clearance rate would do much to lessen such fears.  By consensus, there was much greater public trust until recently, when the decline in clearance rates led to growing and reasonable public doubts about adequate police follow-through.  Regarding DNA, criminals have reacted to the widespread use of DNA evidence by changing their method of homicide.  By using firearms, which leave behind only bullets and casings that can’t be matched to weapons that are disposed of, it is harder to find and apprehend them.  Still, police managed to catch murderers readily even before the advent of fingerprint and DNA technology, so this excuse falls short.

The real answers lie in the other two factors NPR concedes.  Those are the thornier matters that the ruling class does not want to talk about. 

First, police are struggling to find outstanding police detectives who can do this demanding work.  This is not because of lack of taxpayer resources or the “defund the police” movement following the George Floyd Riots in 2020.  Funding for police actually surged in 2021; city officials restored and even augmented funds for law enforcement that year after they realized leftist protesters and the fake-news media had moved on to new topics.  The obstacle is recruiting top-notch people.

Leftist political attacks on police officers have exacerbated the crisis.

Homicide detectives must match wits with criminals or gangs who know how to beat the rap.  Increasingly, it is hard to recruit candidates of sufficient quality to do this painstaking work at a high level.  One retired veteran homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department insists a lack of sophistication and skills in new recruits helps explain why fewer witnesses cooperate:  “These young cops don’t know how to talk to people and get them to cooperate.”  In other words, the quality of the average detective simply isn’t as high as it used to be.

The aftermath of the death of George Floyd surely contributed substantially to this recruiting crisis.  Those considering a career in police work observed in the Floyd case police officers with solid service records subjected to a lynch-mob atmosphere in which they were effectively denied due process; the chief medical examiner changed his opinion on the cause of death following political and media pressure; and other officers making tough, spur-of-the-moment decisions in subduing black suspects in other jurisdictions saw their careers, names and lives instantly incinerated.  Such high-quality prospects may well have decided it made much more sense to become a pharmacist or insurance agent.  The declining quality of homicide detectives has some source, and this theory explains it as well as any.

Activist Judges Have Handcuffed Police and Society

Second, there is the legal system.  Six decades of activist court rulings, commencing during the Warren Court heyday of the 1960s, have steadily granted more rights to criminals at the expense of society.  This dangerous trend began in 1961 with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Mapp v. Ohio.  Mapp created a nationwide “exclusionary rule” that mandates throwing out incriminating evidence obtained without a search warrant, even when the police officer simply blunders or makes a difficult decision under pressure.   One well-regarded study (discussed in my first book) found that Mapp immediately resulted in the dismissal of charges in one-fourth of all weapons cases and one-third of all narcotics cases.

Activist court rulings have greatly hampered law enforcement, and now the full bill is coming due as most murder cases are no longer solved. 

A few years later, Miranda v. Arizona coined the famous “right to remain silent” recitation by police officers.  The high court required cops, of all people, to inform suspects at the very moment they’re taken into custody that they have a right to blow them off.  In subsequent years the right mushroomed further.  Now, criminal defendants can invoke this right to stonewall police and the jury cannot even assume their refusal to cooperate is evidence of guilt—a common-sense inference that juries previously were allowed to make.  Also, if criminal suspects “invoke” their right and ask for a lawyer, any statements made thereafter to police can’t be used at trial.

In 2000, after Congress finally responded to high crime rates by overturning Miranda in part by federal statute, a RINO-dominated U.S. Supreme Court struck down the statute.  Chief Justice William Rehnquist literally cited the fact that “Miranda warnings” had become a fixture in TV cop shows as a reason to keep the rule.  In a biting dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia called out Rehnquist and two other left-leaning Republican appointees to the court (Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy) for previously being “on record” stating there was no such constitutional right.

Indeed, there is no support in the text or history of the Constitution for either the exclusionary rule or Miranda rights.  These criminals’ rights were invented out of thin air by left-wing activist judges, forced down the throat of the body politic, and absorbed awkwardly and tragically by the legal system.  Today, the left-wing genesis of these rights is forgotten.  But these court rulings and their progeny have greatly hampered law enforcement, and now the full bill is coming due as most murder cases are no longer solved.  Eventually, even the dumbest criminal is going to realize he gains nothing from talking to the police and can only make their job easier by telling them anything.

The overall leftward ratchet in the law during this time has exacerbated matters.  For decades, law students have been taught the primacy of the rights of criminal defendants over other considerations.  Defense attorneys are almost never rebuked for violating the rules of legal ethics, while prosecutors risk professional ruin if they overcharge a case or inflame certain constituencies.

How We Win and Restore Order

This, then, is another dismal consummation of the Left’s work in the law:  Now, Americans literally can get away with murder.  Before we fall for the latest quick-fix scheme, this is not a problem caused by Soros-funded district attorneys or that can be remedied by removing them.  Nor is this trend the result of some recent development that can be resolved with merely another illusory “red-wave election.”  The obvious, compelling explanation for the steady decline in murder clearance rates since the 1960s is the series of events in American society, and particularly the legal system, that have made it much harder for the criminal-justice system to identify and catch killers.

We must protect high-quality police detectives who fear politically motivated leftist attacks and overturn corrosive court rulings.

This disaster has been decades in the making and will require systemic reform.  That means hard confrontations with the Left in not only the realm of politics, but also academia, the bureaucracy, the courts, the media and other centers of power.  The Fortress Strategy allows us to create redoubts where determined local law enforcement can make a difference.

If patriots are looking for an issue around which everyone but the most detached limousine liberals will rally, surely this is it.  Americans are not going to accept murderers escaping justice.  After all, they could be next.

Still, we must explain the reasons for this crisis, in clear and compelling terms, and offer a genuine, practical solution.  We must break through both leftist pettifoggery and conservative happy talk to address the heart of the matter:  Recruiting high-quality police detectives who fear politically motivated leftist attacks and overturning corrosive court rulings are not easy things to do.

Maybe the Right will find enough incentive to push through the needed reforms by remembering this:  If we can’t win elections when the dominant ruling class, through their absurd dogmas, is literally creating homicidal anarchy, maybe we simply don’t deserve to govern anymore.