Perhaps keeping smart people from joining the police [1] is having exactly the effect one should expect it to have.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31720214" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31720214</a>
For reference, in Germany the rate is about 95%.<p><a href="https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/152525/umfrage/entwicklung-der-polizeilichen-aufklaerungsquote-bei-mord-seit-1995/" rel="nofollow">https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/152525/umfrag...</a>
There's so many issues as to why this is the case, but ultimately it all boils down to the fact that there is zero repercussions for bad cops.<p>As others mentioned, the police actively filter out smart cops from the ranks. They viciously pull rank around and protect bad cops, and oust any cops that threaten said bad cops. Then when they refuse to do their job, we reward them by paying them more. Giving them larger budgets. Giving them more toys to wave around.<p>Like here in Austin the police are useless. You can report a crime with video evidence of the person and they do nothing. Look at Uvalde where they refused to even pretend to be the heroes they're portrayed as and the budget they have there is insane. It's exceedingly frustrating when every single encounter you've had with the police is outright negative and nothing is being done to fix it.
Is it possible part of this drop is due to increased rigor?<p>It’s a lot harder to pin a murder on some unlucky minority person near the crime scene with DNA, cell phone tracking, and cameras everywhere.
I don't want to watch this CBS video, but my understanding is this stat is based on clearance rate (i.e the police have solved the case to their satisfaction) which comes before any attempt at conviction.
They're too busy busting people for drug crimes which don't harm others<p>Instead of solving things like murder and theft<p>Make drugs legal, make the cops do actual work to actually help people instead of just harm them
We changed the url from <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/crime-without-punishment/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/crime-without-punishment/</a>, which appears to be just the video, to the associated text article. It unfortunately autoplays the video though.