More people are getting away with murder

Was on a jury for a murder trial dec 2021. The trial gave me a new found respect for how trials are conducted, what evidence is allowed in, how defendants are protected, and the general thought and reasoning behind it all. Then, the jury deliberated and I lost a ton of respect for the ability of a jury of my peers to logically reason and responsibly decide. It was an absolute shit show in false pretenses, irrational conclusions, biases, logical fallacies. We ended up as a hung jury. I was in the minority opinion and we let the offending party ( again in my opinion ) walk.

Why limit this to unsolved murders?<p>How many police depts ignore property crime?<p>How many police depts have hour long wait times for 911 response?<p>How many 911 systems routinely delay or drop calls?<p>We had a story near here recently where a DUI accident investigation couldn&#x27;t proceed because it took so long for police to arrive that the suspect sobered up enough<p>Or the woman who was hit by a car and the police took over an hour to respond<p>You can find these stories for every PD now<p>That said, NPR should be more honest an retitle this story to be about Oakland though, because that is what they wrote about

Why does the lead photo prominently feature a “racism is a sin” sign and the article immediately mentions PoC victims in Oakland? Isn’t the vast majority of PoC victimhood in Oakland intraracial? Not many Klansmen walking around Oakland. Annoying race baiting from NPR.

That article doesn’t mention any number, and I was curious how that compared to suicides and road deaths. There are 7.8 homicides per 100,000 people, so about 26k per year. That’s staggering.<p>There were 46,412 suicides among adults in 2021.<p>37,461 people were killed on the roads. Given how frequent are hit-and-runs with accidents, I expected it to be more common in deadly situations, but it seems to be the opposite: 2,049 fatalities that resulted from hit-and-run crashes in 2016.<p>Finally, in 2021, a record 106,699 lives were lost to overdoses.

The comment section here is in poor shape. Violent crime is up all over the united states, and at least from what I&#x27;ve seen, there is not a single easy explanation for why. ie, I&#x27;m very sympathetic to the argument that &quot;de-fund the police&quot; has had very negative effects, however we&#x27;re seeing violent crime rise in districts which were not de-funded. The whole red vs. blue states &#x2F; cities thing doesn&#x27;t seem to stack up either, as violent crime appears to be up just about everywhere.

If you want to solve more violent crimes, you need to hire more detectives. Here is an article that references all of the data:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slowboring.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;a-really-boring-way-to-solve-more" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slowboring.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;a-really-boring-way-to-solve-mo...</a>

It always struck me as ironic that &quot;the perfect murder&quot; is such a big trope in fiction, while in real life an astonishing number of them go unsolved.

There are a number of factors at play here, one is certainly, as others have pointed out, that police are taking less initiative on the job due to low morale and their own form of quiet quitting.<p>However another major issue is that people are not talking to police like the used to. People do not trust police with information and more so they do not trust police to protect them. Volunteering information on a murderer is dangerous you have to trust the system can protect you.<p>And finally, murder clearance rates were focused on in the 90s and sometimes that led to closing cases early or other bad practices to increase superficial metrics.

&quot;While reasons behind the drop are multi-faceted, Cook and other experts warn that more people getting away with murder in the the U.S. is driving a kind of doom loop of mutual mistrust: low murder clearance rates impede future investigations which in turn potentially drive up killings in some communities where a lack of arrests undermines deterrence and sends a message that the police will not or cannot protect them.&quot;<p>Interesting that the article mentions the sizable drop in clearance rates in 2020 yet does not offer up any explanation for why that may be the case.

You should take care of yourself. If you are in a vehicle or crime accident, good luck with justice.<p>How do you want to prove anything?<p>I have seen it in the case of accidents. If there is no well portioned camera, you can’t say much. Even if there is one, it can still be difficult to prove someone’s fault. In most cases the evidence is weak. And if you succeed, there could be some hurdles for the other side but nothing will replace your health.

&gt; But a murder can also be declared cleared through what&#x27;s known as an &quot;exceptional means.&quot; For example, if a suspect is dead, can&#x27;t be extradited or prosecutors refuse to press charges.<p>I don&#x27;t see this as gaming the system. The police have done their job as far as it can be done. What do you want the cops to do in any of these cases? Are you accusing them of just stuffing random names into files?

One thing is kind of unclear to me, are we segregating by murder type?<p>For example (not sure if true): It would seem a drop in easier to identity domestic violence murders would throw stats off for the others that were always hard to solve.<p>My googling is failing on getting the mix of murders by type by year.

How about “more murders are being discovered” than before.<p>In old times, you could’ve done killed someone and blame it on anything.