(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A data analysis from the FBI found that about half of the murders in the United States in 2020 went unsolved.
Since 1980, the number of closed cases continually dropped from 71%, landing around 50% in 2020. No data has been released since 2020.
There is no public database that allows citizens to track whether cases go unsolved, but the Murder Accountability Project and the Marshall Project performed an audit of the data released by the FBI, the Post Millennial reported.
“About 1 of every 2 murders was solved,” in 2020, according to the Marshall Project.
“We’re on the verge of being the first developed nation where the majority of homicides go uncleared,” Thomas Hargrove, fonder of the Murder Accountability project, said.
Not all law enforcement agencies have the same criteria for closing cases, but generally a suspect must be arrested, charged and prosecuted in order for a case to be considered “cleared.”
The FBI data also includes the “exceptional means” for case clearing in the statistic, meaning if a suspect died, cannot be extradited or prosecutors did not press charges, a case is considered cleared.
Hargrove is of the mind that “declining homicide rates are the result of inadequate allocation of resources—detectives, forensic technicians, crime laboratory capacity and adequate training of personnel.”
This news comes in the midst of revelations of dropped standards and hiring crises in police departments across the country.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter riots, police departments faced an extreme hiring crisis, causing them to drop their standards for education and physical training. Many departments departments even started offering jobs to ex-felons.
Scandals among police departments continue to crop up as well. The city of Oakland recently fired their seventh police chief for two decades of misconduct.
Questions of police qualifications are pronounced as departments continue to hire woke to “promote diversity” and increased sensitivity, while the Left’s pushing to defund the police has exacerbated the problem.
