Since December 4th when United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead in midtown Manhattan, a continual panorama of news coverage has filled our devices and our minds. The spectacle includes hordes of police ploughing through Central Park, surveillance images captured from an Upper West Side hostel, the Port Authority bus terminal and multiple other NYC locations. There are revelations of a water bottle with a smudged fingerprint, a granola bar wrapper, a found backpack. Commentators analyze the killer’s shooting stance, ability to clear his weapon, distance from the victim, type of gun. The FBI is participating in the investigation and has upped the reward for information to $50,000 while the Atlanta police is now involved. That’s a lot of resources for one murder investigation.
Meanwhile online amateur sleuths are mostly sitting out this investigation. One fellow posted on X that he’d shared info with the NYPD about which bike Thompson’s killer rode to get away. After that he was labeled a ‘snitch’ online. The dynamics of the investigation are mirroring the situation that led to the crime (allegedly).
Think about it this way. New York City has a contemporary homicide rate of around 386 per year. That means five or six more murders have likely occurred since Thompson was killed but I haven’t heard a word about them. Thankfully the current murder rate is a fraction of the city’s 1990 rate of 2245 homicides, so NYPD’s 34,000 officers should have the time to solve all these homicides, right?
Wrong. It turns out homicide clearance rates have been declining since the 1960s. In 1962 93% of homicides were solved. By 1994 that clearance rate had fallen to 64%. Now national averages say it’s a coin-toss whether a murder will be solved or go cold, leaving families and communities with no sense of justice or safety. The NYPD claims clearance rates in the 70s and 80s while the FBI places them in the 20s. (See my post Is the FBI Obscuring Murder Statistics?) Some cities fall way below the national average; Detroit solves 31% of homicides while Flint, Michigan solves 17.5%. Chicago police make an arrest in 20% of fatal shootings.
For perspective, compare this to other countries. Mexico only solves around 5% of murders but then it’s dealing with over 30,000 every year. Scotland proudly proclaims a 100% clearance rate but take into account they’ve only had to deal with 605 murders in the last decade. Germany claims a 93% clearance rate for 7,208 murders over ten years. Over the past decade the US experienced 119,460 firearm homicides. If other murder weapons are included that number goes higher.
So are half of all homicides never solved because police departments are overtaxed? CBS News analyzed murder clearance rates in NYC and found that if the victim is white the clearance rate is 84% while if black it’s 53%. Hispanic victim clearance rates are a bit higher at 61%. National murder clearance rates show the same discrepancy according to the racial group of the victim.
Does this mean that police don’t try hard with murders of people of color? One explanation offered for the discrepancy is that minority communities distrust police and won’t aid them. Supposedly this problem has worsened since the George Floyd murder. But police make choices about where to put their resources. Which spins me back to my original question: why are such massive resources invested in one murder of a CEO of a major corporation who made around $10.5 million last year? Could it be that murder among lower income people is more tolerated? Is crime fiction obligated to reflect this problem or provide escape from it? What do you think?
Good Article with statistics to back it up. My favorite kind.
An awful lot of "golden age" (and other) style murder stories do centre on better off victims, at least in stuff I read . Being a lord or a child or relative of a lord does seem to be quite dangerous. The investigators are quite often titled too for some reason and often oxbridge educated. This may be part of being "cozy" of course - I don't read many thrillers or things described as psychological. I wonder if a lot of this is to do with finding an interesting motive for the plot - titles or wealth tend to imply inheritance and for some reason dark secrets. Ordinary people tend not to have these which makes them less interesting victims, unless they have a characteristic attractive to a serial killer.
Being a detective seems to imply that you're damaged in some way or have a hidden past. I wonder what the statistics on that are. If not damaged then dashingly handsome of course.