New Strategies, Tech Help Cleveland PD Solve More Murders in 2021

CLEVELAND—Less than an hour after Cleveland homicide detectives arrived to investigate the shooting death of a transgender woman last June, they heard rapid gunfire in the distance.

When a team of investigators got to that shooting, they found three more people dead and four others hurt at a gas station.

Homicide detectives and Cleveland police supervisors sprang into action, implementing a new strategy for assigning cases and using a new crime analyst embedded in the unit. Investigators ultimately solved both shootings.

Homicide supervisors told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer that despite staffing issues, several changes made to the unit in 2021 helped detectives solve 64% of their cases last year, one of the best solve rates in recent years. Only 2019, at 67%, had a better solve rate in the last nine years.

“I’d like to think what happened in 2019 and this year is the new norm,” Cleveland police Commander Ali Pillow said.

It’s just the second time since 2013 the unit ended a year solving more than 60% of homicides. It’s also a marked improvement over the 49% solve rate at the end of 2020. Most years during that stretch, police solved about half of all homicide cases.

The increase in solving homicides came at a time when Cleveland suffered through its deadliest two-year stretch in 40 years, with 192 homicides in 2020 and 170 in 2021.

Last year’s solve rate — which in the last month has increased to 67% — is above 2020′s national average of 50%. The FBI will release nationwide homicide solve rates for 2021 later in the year.

Police consider cases closed when an arrest is made, or if the suspect in the case died. The number does not consider whether the cases end in convictions.

Michigan State University professor of criminal justice Mike Davis, who studies homicide solve rates, said Cleveland’s rate will likely come in higher than the national average.

“Nationally, because of the pandemic and social unrest, the solve rate dropped to around the mid-50s,” Davis said. “So 64% is actually very good.”

Davis said a number of factors contribute to a department’s solve rate, with staffing chief among them. Each detective should, on average, get assigned three to five cases per year. In prior years, some Cleveland detectives doubled that in a single month.

And while Cleveland police officials have assigned more detectives to investigate homicides — there are 22 detectives currently, up from 12 in 2018— the numbers are still below the 38 recommended by a U.S. Department of Justice study of the unit in 2020. The unit also has two agents from the FBI and one from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that work exclusively on homicides in Cleveland.

Four police detectives, however, are expected to retire by May.

“Caseload is everything because homicide investigations are so labor intensive, more labor intensive than people realize,” Davis said. “If you have more homicides but not more detectives, each case is going to get less attention.”

Pillow and homicide Lt. Maurice Brown said in an interview they’d like to have more detectives assigned to the unit, but it’s become increasingly difficult during a department-wide drop in police officers. About 200 officers left the department in 2021, leaving the city with 1,468 officers, about 200 shy of its budgeted amount.

Brown said they’ve tried to find ways around the staffing issue by “thinking outside the box.”

First, they implemented a new strategy for the way detectives are assigned cases, a recommendation from a 2016 report on the unit by the Police Executive Research Forum. Previously, a two-detective team was on call on nights and weekends for a month, while working regularly-scheduled daytime hours.

That often resulted in detectives getting a slew of cases in quick succession. Brown said they changed that last year to have four-detective teams. Those teams then rotate when they’re on-call on a rolling basis. When a homicide happens at night, the team that’s up heads out. The next team takes the next homicide and so on.

“There are now more sets of eyes, more heads to bounce ideas off of for each case,” Brown said. “It spreads the cases around more evenly and reduces the time a detective gets to a scene if there’s more than one homicide that night.”

In the early hours of June 12, Tierramarie Lewis, a transgender woman, was shot and killed on East 79th Street near Cedar Avenue. A group of four detectives showed up to investigate that scene.

About an hour later, another team of four detectives went to the Prestige Petro gas station on Buckeye Road and East 89th Street, where a shootout left three people dead.

Along with the detective work, Brown said another 2021 change helped solve both those cases: a Real-Time Crime Center analyst assigned solely to the homicide unit.

The center, opened in 2020, is staffed by analysts who pick through data that pours in from license plate readers, traffic cameras and surveillance videos. That data is then directed to the detectives on the ground. Analysts also go through cellphone data to help detectives strengthen their investigations.

Last year, Brown said an analyst assigned to the homicide unit in July proved invaluable.

“It assists in expediting what the detectives are doing,” Brown said. “It saves them time. What might take them weeks, the analyst can sit there and do quicker.”

Davis, the Michigan State professor, said embracing technology, particularly in conjunction with an analyst, is becoming crucial for understaffed police departments.

“Having that technology available like surveillance cameras, license plate readers and ShotSpotter technology has been extraordinarily valuable, especially if you have analysts to give it meaning,” Davis said. “We’ve seen that can make a huge difference in the investigation process and in solving cases.”

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