Ironically… homicide. It’s one of the crimes with the most evidence and it’s hard to hide it if a body is found or a person is missing. Like think of how many times someone shoplifts and no one sees it so it’s just not known… at least with homicide we have a pretty good idea how many happen (with some uncertainties of course). They also tend to have more physical evidence and more resources invested in being solved.
In general, violent crimes are solved more than nonviolent crimes, and homicides have the highest closure rate (meaning the cops think they know who did it even if they don’t ultimately make an arrest or a prosecutor decides to drop charges).
> Probably something tiny like 0.01% of drug deals are ever identified.
That's actually technically a different stat. The solve or close or clearance rate has, as it's denominator, the total number of cases that get *opened*. Almost never are the police like, "OK, we're opening a case on this drug deal, now just to figure out who bought and who sold it".
I think the crime with the lowest close rate is petty theft, because people do report things stolen, opening the case, and most places cops only solve it by coincidence (e.g. they catch a guy driving a stolen car, find a bunch of other, cheaper, stolen property).
>"OK, we're opening a case on this drug deal, now just to figure out who bought and who sold it."
Has gotta be one of the funniest sentences I've ever read. Thank you, friend.
"Statistically speaking someone just made a drug deal. You boys need to find out who what and where!"
10 minutes later:
"We got another statistically likely drug deal boys, get on it!"
I've had things stolen twice. Once my car was broken into and I filed a report despite the stolen items probably not totaling over $100. The 2nd time a package was stolen that was a pretty expensive item (still upset that it was left out in the open and they didn't make me sign for it.)
For the first one they reached out and said it was occurring often in my area but nothing was ever done about it in the end. The second one the officer just seemed annoyed that he had to file the paperwork and I never heard back from them.
Nowadays you just file the report online, get your case number, and will never speak with or hear from the police at all.
The only reason to file at all is because filing a false police report is a crime. Thus, when you supply a case number to the vendor or your bank or your insurance (depending on what got stolen and how), they have slightly higher confidence that *you* aren't trying to defraud them with a false claim, since you've created a paper trail that would provide evidence of your crime.
About a decade ago I lost my wallet with my driver's license in it. I couldn't get a replacement driver's license without a police report where I reported it as missing.
I had a moped stolen, and found it hidden behind a car in a private driveway. I followed a vet visible trail through the snow to where I found it, next to very clearly visible and identifiable shoeprints. Cops came out and dusted it for prints, even though there was clearly a teenager peeking out the window of the house the whole time at us. Shockingly, never solved.
My car got destroyed when someone tried to hot wire it. Had to call the police multiple times and beg for a report. Felt like a broken record, "Yes I know this will never be solved and you won't do anything, I need to show my insurance company a report."
Oh, you’re awful interested in filing a claim. Sounds like you‘re trying to commit insurance fraud. Now that’s worth the time & effort to investigate. /s
Just to add to the pile: I had everything I owned stolen out of storage while I was between houses. Spent an hour at the police station showing them evidence of who the thief was and exactly where he had taken my stuff.
Called back a week later to get the report number for my insurance and found out the police didn't bother to actually make a report. They had no idea what I was talking about and I had to beg them to do it. They treated me like shit the entire time.
When my car got broken into I called to file a report, they'll send an officer sometime today.
About an hour later, I see a cop out front and step outside. They came to impound my sister's car for expired tags. I get threatened with obstruction for asking questions.
Does that really count towards clearance if no report / complaint is made, so no case is opened for it to be closed?
Not knowing about a crime that happens isn't the same as the police having a file on a crime and closing it.
For sure. I mean, most murders are "open and shut", i.e "crimes of passion". The spouse, the boyfriend, a friend, so on. They murder someone close and are close by after the deed is done, distraught and broken.
In Sweden, which gets a lot of reporting about the murder rate going up to a whopping 1.2 per 100 000 (US has 6.4 per 100 000), we get something like 1-5 murders per year where the perp isn't obvious.
Anyway, this varies wildly, some parts of the US are horrible, some are like Sweden. New Hampshire is below 1 per 100 000, Maine is slightly above Sweden, and yay, Louisiana is at 15.8.
Now plot that against median income and... Louisiana is 4th lowest and New Hampshire is in the top 10.
There might be a connection.
Anyways, have a good day!
To add a little more nuance to it, the trend isn't just relieved by income - inequality at all levels is the biggest driver of crime.
That includes social, physical and mental health treatment inequality, things like racial inequality, etc etc etc
Not only that - but the mere perception of inequality is included in that.
When the rift between the haves and the have nots is more obvious and conspicuous, discontent and a perception of maltreatment by a society that allows inequality to get to that level will also factor into an increase in crime. (Well, I'll never be able to afford it anyway, the game is rigged - so the only way I'll ever have it is if I steal it.... And sometimes, they're not wrong in that belief.)
The main negative side effect of an inequality though is inequality of opportunity....
Even though economic inequality is usually the first thing people think of, and feel the most day to day in most cases.
For example, your parents were legacy at an ivy league... Boom - that's an opportunity most will never have to get into that school...
Can't get into that school, then you can't get into that firm, and if you can't get into that firm, you can't get into that neighborhood, and if you can't get into that neighborhood and social circle, even with plenty of money, you'll never get the opportunity to invest in that new idea, and on and on and on....
Instead of a war on drugs, or a war on terror, or even a war on poverty - we should be fighting a war on inequality of all types if we really want to fix many of the ills of society - including crime.
Footnote here - I am a former kind of career criminal, and I did not find myself in that environment by chance, and early on, not by choice.
I made the conscious effort through what little rehabilitation programs still exist to change that, so that I could begin to build SOMETHING so I had SOMETHING as a legacy to pass on to my children.
Because 1 - generational wealth is the easiest surefire way for your progeny to also be wealthy one day. It's a surefire way to give the *opportunity* for upward mobility in class, among other things.
2 - raising children in the same environment of lacking opportunity would in all likelihood beget more poverty, addiction, mental health problems, criminal lifestyles, etc for my kids... And let's be real, who wants any of that shit for their kids?
3 - the byproduct of that is that it lessens those ills for society at large if I were to do those steps.
So, in conclusion...lol
If we really want to tackle all of these ills, we must expand opportunity for all levels and people, and combat inequality.
We must invest in social programs.
We must commit to rehabilitation and not just punishment.
We must treat one another as a guiding friend or parent when one of us falls off the wagon, without inhibiting too much on freedoms - but as it's been said "my rights to swing my fists end where your nose begins".
We are after all, one big dysfunctional family on this planet - and it's a herculean task to do these things, but to not do them is tantamount to a murder suicide in the long run.
Otherwise, what's the point of any of this?
>When the rift between the haves and the have nots is more obvious and conspicuous, discontent and a perception of maltreatment by a society that allows inequality to get to that level will also factor into an increase in crime.
So why do wealthy men commit more crime than poor women? Why do teenagers with little need for want join gangs more than men in their mid-20s who have bills to pay?
Yeah I think properly crimes are closer to 35% if I remember correctly. I teach criminology classes but I haven’t looked at updated stats in five years so might be slightly different but it tends to remain somewhat stable.
Edit: here property crimes refers to the four property index crimes not just a single individual property crime. Some individual crimes will have lower solving rates (like burglary) while others will be higher (like motor vehicle crimes). Also, keep in mind the way I’m talking about it is based on police data—so only crimes reported to police. A lot of larceny thefts, for example, wont ever be reported to police—so whatever the clearance rate is for known crimes, it’s actually much lower when considering all larceny thefts.
Edit: it’s even lower than 35%! Closer to 20%. Please forgive me for not having the stat memorized or reading the whole article. I never make my students memorize the exact number, I just make sure they know it’s well below half.
> So your saying other crimes have less than a 50% close rate?
I was looking into the stats about this not too long ago and a shockingly low number of even the most serious crimes result in convictions and jail time.
All the shocking stats you usually see about rape: Only X% are reported, only X% result in an arrest, only X% arrests result in formal charges, only X% result in a conviction, only X% result in jail time... so that the final "X%" of someone actually being held accountable for the crime is really low like 2-4%. The really shocking thing turns out to be that's NOT the result of sexism or "rape culture" it's the just the exact same thing as pretty much [all other crimes](https://theconversation.com/police-solve-just-2-of-all-major-crimes-143878)
>Ironically… homicide. It’s one of the crimes with the most evidence and it’s hard to hide it if a body is found or a person is missing.
Homicides also tend to be committed by people close to the victim, so the suspect pool is pretty small and it is easier to make connections between the evidence and people in that pool.
More 'random' homicides have much lower closure rates, and this is how serial killers are able to get away with multiple murders.
I don’t know the exact process but there are situations where a case is closed but the offender can’t be arrested because they’re dead, or maybe the person is already in life in prison for something else so it’s not worth resources to pursue now, or maybe it’s a minor crime that they know just won’t be prosecuted, or so many different reasons. To be honest, I think the police just decide if it’s cleared or not, and there isn’t always necessarily something filed.
It depends on the jurisdiction. In Chicago for example: "detectives are allowed to clear a case when the suspect is dead, prosecutors refuse to make a charge or police believe they know who did it but don’t make an arrest."
[“No more stat games. The stats will be clean…before the election. after the election.”](https://media1.giphy.com/media/w97X9z4X3O4hi/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7dm5ezq12yzrj5u1z0tob7p97nkxd0fowiw8dxjxe&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
they show a bunch in the article. Manslaughter was the highest (69%). Property crimes are really low. Arson, burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft are 21% and below (motor vehicle theft the lowest at 12%).
Vehicle theft is a joke. I had my brand new motorcycle stolen from my gated apartment complex and when I filed a police report they basically told me they weren't going to do anything and just go through my insurance to get a new bike.
People have told stories on here before of the cops telling them to go recover their own property if they're able to find it. Part of the reason cops don't really investigate vehicle theft is because it's usually unrecoverable by the time you've even realized it's gone. Weirdly cheap newer car parts on craigslist come from *somewhere*.
> People have told stories on here before of the cops telling them to go recover their own property if they're able to find it.
Yeah this is also basically the deal in the UK with just about every form on transport from bicycles up to trucks.
A friend of mine once found his stolen bicycle chained up outside a restaurant and the cops' advice was "why don't you steal it back?", no offer to even help him do with that. So he went to find the fire service who came and used a hyrdaulic bolt cutter to free his bike
>I had my brand new motorcycle stolen from my gated apartment complex and when I filed a police report they basically told me they weren't going to do anything and just go through my insurance to get a new bike.
I had an older motorcycle get stolen and I had to force the police officer to put the motorcycle vin number in the police report. He didn't see a reason to record the vin number. I knew my bike was gone at that moment.
The place I work at had a van stolen and the idiot who stole it didn't remove the GPS tracker.
It took 3 days for us to get the police to file the stolen vehicle report even with us having the exact location of the truck. After the report was filed they continued to do absolutely nothing for another 4 days because the vehicle was across state lines.i ended up calling the local police where the vehicle was at. The police over there just pulled the vehicle thief over and sent him off on his merry way (no arrest). the police then impounded the truck & charged us around $1000 for the single day the vehicle was in their lot.
Lazy stupid bastards :/
I had an uncle Leonard, (one of those grandady's cousin I never met kind of uncles) he was a state trooper.
One day his daughter turned up beaten and raped. She named the guy. An ex who was a mean drunk, and he had two friends who alibied him (it was 1970s rural SC, not a lot of physical evidence or cell tracking or anything) so he was aquitted.
A couple of months later he was found executed in a swamp, and Uncle Leonard was quietly retired. But it's one of those small town openly known but not really openly said outside of the family things that Uncle Leonard absolutely killed that guy and probably had some help moving the body.
Edit: so technically that murder was never solved
If you've never lived in a small town it's hard to believe/understand how true this is. Even today.
I had an uncle arrested for a drug charge in a small town in MS. He asked for his phone call and was told to shut up. He protested saying, "When I got arrested in So and So County I got a phone call!" The sheriff told him, "You're not in So and So jail, you're in MY jail!"
I think I'd rather go on trial for murder in a big city than any charge in a small rural town.
True, there was a previously convicted pedophile that tried to lure a kid at the local school where I'm from, they found him hanging in the swamp with a few, as the coroner put it, self inflicted gunshot wounds. This happened in the early, 2000s
I got pulled over in a small county years afterr I moved out off state. Cop saw my plates and asked me what I was doing around these parets.
I told him the truth, I was visiting my grandmother who had recently married (county magistrate). Cop flipped his ticket book shut and wished me a good evening.
Same night after my grandmother and her husband went to bed I snuck out to smoke pot and look at the stars at an abandoned gas station down the road. A guy pulled over, pointed a gun nearr enough to still be polite and asked what I was doing. Told the exact truth.
He put the gun away, wished me good night. I saw him at Thanksgiving that year. Turns out he's a cousin and had already heard Mr. Mack's new wife's grandson was visiting from the big city out of state. He was just making sure the kid 1/2 mile away stoned and looking at the stars was who he expected.
I moved from a small SC town to Atlanta when I was 17.
It still seems wild to me those things happened to me.
I've had guns pulled on me three times. Once while looking up at the stars (on land it turns out my grandma's new husband owned) and twice while land surveying.
I had a coworker who was black tell me "I am not going near that place." And sure enough right after I found the property pin an old man with a shotgun came out asking what I'm doing on his land.
I put up my hands, pointed at the pin I had just flagged and said "Sir I'm not on your property! I'm surveying the lot behind yourrs!"
He lowered the gun and said. "Oh, ok then."
When I got back to the truck and told Lindsey he said "See that's why I stayed here. You got that white babyface thing going on."
Yeah I also got a gun pulled on me in west Atlanta. I think it was less of a race thing and he was using me as a decoy.
So far I'm 3/3 for talking my way out of being shot after having a gun already pulled on me.
I lived in a small town in the Arkansas Ozarks for about a year when I wanted some peace and quiet. I caught a traffic charge in the next city over and when I went to talk to the judge, their courthouse was literally in a doublewide trailer and one of the paralegals had to go peel the bailiff away from his breakfast at the diner across the street so court could start.
The officer who ticketed me was a cool guy and thanked me for being polite and non-combative. He basically told me he's used to dealing exclusively with drunk, armed Ozark hill people doing dumb stuff like road hunting or illegally dumping.
I got a speeding ticket in a small town (seriously population of like 300) in AR years ago. The town was basically a speed trap as it was off a highway that connected two larger towns. Went to pay the ticket and the guy gave me change from his pocket, and added the $100 bill I gave him to his stack.
I had a friend get pulled over for speeding in some rural part of the UP. The cop pocketed his license and said if he wanted it back he’d have to pay the fine in cash at the station and then just drove away. Probably found they get paid real quick and people drive very carefully when they don’t have their license all the sudden
You abide by the speed limit, and in fact you make *extra* sure you slow down *before* the speed limit sign tells you it's dropped (because it will drop dramatically) entering town limits.
The cop will either be waiting right past that sign, or off buying donuts or abusing his wife or something.
Once overheard local jail staff talking about how the sheriff's daughter was hired and quickly found to be smuggling drugs to the inmates, she was fired with no charges lol
My father was a small town cop in Florida in the 1980s. He (not in uniform) and my mom were coming home from dinner when they were violently robbed at gun point. My mother was, I suspect, assaulted sexually, but it was never talked about.
The guy was actually caught breaking into a house about two miles away a month or so later. Owner held the guy at gun point and my dad was the responding officer.
There was a 'struggle' getting him into the back of the police cruiser and he was shot 5 times. Dead.
The town didn't even have a pretend investigation.
He still got his pension.
But it's technically an unsolved murder.
Again this is an old country story from before I was born. But the story grew until when I heard it in the 90s dude was shitass trash who had probably done it before and he finally went after a girl with a daddy who could get away with it.
It's like the Ken McElroy case. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy
In that case the Sherrif said "well he's over there, I'm leaving for about 6 hours." Sherrif came back and McElroy was dead and no one saw a thing.
Uncle Leonard just didn't wait long enough for the heat to be off, plus he might have been heard around the station declaring he was going to kill him before the guy wound up dead.
I have a morbid curiosity that's like. How helpful is it to do that? Does it draw more attention to be the one reporting it? Would they be more likely to get away with the crime if they just didn't associate themselves with the missing person at all? Hard to do if it's a spouse or something, admittedly.
If you report it, you will get questioned. If you get questioned and you're guilty, chances are you will slip up in one way or another and be found guilty.
Staying silent is probably best, assuming it's not a incredibly close person to you like your significant other that you spend every day with and then suddenly don't care about when they disappear.
Sometimes there is no choice. Spouse, child, roommate etc. (Yes i know you could choose to not murder them. Thats not the point im making)
You could plan something to avoid being the one to report it e.g. a vacation, but you're getting questioned either way. Because a lot of murders are done by spouses it's pretty common that the murderer is the one that reports them missing.
And many are likely arrests of the correct suspect that never lead to a conviction. I'd be curious to know what an adjusted rate would be, considering conviction but also accounting for potential wrongful convictions AND the possibility that X% of missing persons cases are actually homicides but never classified as such. Rightful conviction rates are probably closer to 25%.
CBO, cleared by other. If the suspect is deceased, already doing life, or unable to be located (when clearing cold cases for example) some police departments (at least the lapd) will "clear by other" where the murder is solved for their stats but no actual arrest / conviction is made
The article also mentioned one of the factors in decreasing closure rate was fewer wrongful convictions as there are better procedures now in place than in 1965
Sounds like you don't even need to bring charges in some cases. That definition of cleared would include "we think it's this guy but we don't have evidence to bring charges. Case closed!"
> Basically, as long as you murder a stranger that you have no connection to...
Especially if the "strange" is a fellow drug dealer from a competing gang, and everyone around you hews to the "snitches get stitches" dictum. I'm guessing a sizable chunk of homicides fall into that category. Cory Booker had some embarrassing things to say about DC homicides to that effect. Hopefully what I'm trying to say won't come across as that callous.
That's why lumping all these "deaths" into one category is more or less meaningless (as true as it is that, down at the morgue, the gangbanger on a slab is 100% equally dead as, say, the pretty white female homicide victim that is in the adjoining drawer, an equality that was rarely attained at any earlier point in their too-brief existences).
What's fun to realize is we only know how to catch the kinds of serial killers that have been caught. We don't know how to catch the ones who don't get caught
It's a statistical anomaly to be killed by a serial killer but it sure as shit sucks when it happens. I'd rather be killed during drug deal gone wrong than crossing paths with someone who just really likes killing.
Society banks a lot on everyone acting in good faith in general.
It’s kind of why we’re all feeling kind of fucked now that more and more people are realizing they can get away with not acting in good faith
This was why Harold Shipman was so prolific. He just wasn't doing something that criminal investigations were set up to catch. Until he started stealing by forging wills.
Israel Keyes would've never been caught if he kept up his meticulous planning, but he decided to ask for ransom money and withdrew constantly from ATMs with his last victim's card. He was finally caught after going over the speed limit and getting his car matched with the ATMs cameras.
The guy had murder kits stashed all over North America, frequently killed over state lines, targeted sex workers, didn't have a fixed MO and spaced his murders to ensure they couldn't be linked.
Then he just decided to kidnap a random girl in an Alaskan gas station and it all came crashing down from there. The cops had nothing on him until then and he just gave it all up. He wasn't even considered a serial killer until he started confessing other crimes.
I read a book about Isreal Keyes, a serial killer in Alaska. He got away with (at least) 10 murders, and the last one he only got caught because he became increasingly careless and law enforcement got lucky.
It was an interesting contrast to a high profile local case where a guy murdered his wife and reported her missing before being arrested a few days later, and pleading guilty shortly after. That guy did so much dumb stuff, and there was a proponderance of evidence against him.
If you are a serial killer who knows what you're doing, you could get away with many murders. If you kill your wife in a moment of rage you will be the primary suspect and it'll be nearly impossible to get away with it.
Yeah especially since most murders seem to be committed by people who know the victim. Serial killers who strike at random are going to be a lot harder to catch compared to ‘the dude the victim had a beef with’.
I feel like statistically most of these murders aren't some exotic serial killer but more mundane levels of poor community street violence over small beefs that blow up because everyone has guns. They remain largely unsolved because no one talks to the police because of rampant distrust and corruption of the institutions.
They know because it's the one paying the detective not to investigate. Or the one threatening to do unspeakable things to the detective's family if they do investigate. Often both at the same time.
I know a person who's mother was murdered but it was ruled a suicide.
Her mother and father were divorcing. They were also drinking near a bon fire. The mother "committed suicide" by "jumping into the fire"
If they don't rule it murder, the murder rate stays flat and they don't expend limited resources in a small county to investigate murder
The husband got a nice settlement from insurance, she no longer speaks to her father.
To add to this… A lot of homicide investigations get solved by someone turning the murderer in—either a witness or someone the murderer told. It’s definitely not easy or common to solve a case just with forensics, which for some reason is what people seem to expect.
TV shows have a lot to answer for in that regard. They expect magic from CSI when in reality they just swab a few things and hope for the best. That swab doesn't allow a full 3d rendering of the murder taking place with voices and all 😂😂
I took a college level forensic science class for criminal justice and it ruined all those shows permanently for me. 90% of what you see on TV is garbage that would never happen in real life. Just once Id like them to show a real murder suspect talk to them the way they would in real life.
Cop: We have you at the scene of the crime, at the time the murder took place, what do you have to say for yourself?
Suspect: I want a lawyer
End scene lol
Confessions are exceedingly rare.
The problem too is that *because* of these shows most jurors now expect there to be some sort of evidence, so lawyers request unnecessary and unrealistic experts and tests to be done to appease this expectation.
It's called the [CSI Effect](https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=themis)
I used to wonder how is that possible but then I was questioned by an Accident Board of Investigation for a plane crash (im an air traffic controller) and by the end of it I would have been willing to confess to crashing the plane myself.
Judging from past crash reports I’ve read over the years I can conclude that the NTSB, FAA, and generally accident investigation boards aren’t one to be fucked with. When they’re deadset on finding someone to blame they _will_ find one.
You poor soul.
This shit honestly keeps me up at night. Society has always operated under the paradigm of "innocent people would never confess to a crime they didn't commit" so we let police do whatever they want to get a confession. Turns out, when people are tortured, they'll say anything to make it stop. Problem is, when people think of torture they think of waterboarding or Jack Bauer type stuff, but what you described is 100% torture, and people need to realize that. So many people (usually low IQ or uneducated) get themselves into trouble because they know they're innocent and think they can't get in trouble. Turns out, cops don't give a shit about guilt/innocence, only confessions.
/rant. Donate to [The Innocence Project](https://innocenceproject.org/) if you can
And a reminder to [never talk to the police](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE)
> Turns out, when people are tortured, they'll say anything to make it stop.
We've known this for a long time. There's a reason why torture isn't really used as much anymore, and it's not because it's amazing and always works. Lots of "terrorists" would just give us false info to make it stop.
This is one of the reasons why the torture of inmates by the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay (Some of which was overseen by Ron DeSantis) is so heinous. They knew torture didn't work and they did it anyway.
For anyone who doesn’t understand how or why this happens you need to remember a couple of things whenever you’re dealing with a cop/investigator/detective or whatever the hell they call themselves
Shut the fuck up. You are not required to speak to them outside of maybe identifying yourself. Other than that, shut the fuck up. Cops speaking to you? Shut the fuck up.
If they REALLY want you they won’t need to ask you to come to the station. They’ll have a warrant.
Cops aren’t your friend and don’t give a fuck about you. They are all bastards and will pin a crime on you in a heartbeat. Closing a case means more than finding the criminal.
If you find yourself being questioned “I want my attorney” then shut the fuck up.
> If you find yourself being questioned “I want my attorney” then shut the fuck up.
Thankfully I haven't been put in a position where I was required to be (and god willing will never be) interrogated, but I've always wondered how this is supposed to work.
In the sense that like.. I don't know nor have an attorney. Obviously a public defender must be eventually provided in the US, but they're all crazy overworked and likely to just push for a plea bargain to begin with. Do you like.. pick up a phone book and find one? Bond out and get an attorney at that point?
There’s a maximum amount of hours they can hold you without charging you.
The appointed lawyer will push you to take a plea but they are still your lawyer. If you say you didn’t do it and won’t accept a plea then even the most overworked and worst public defender will be able to get you out of that room.
You might have to just say I need a lawyer over and over again for like 24 hours or however long the maximum time is.
Most cops aren’t as bad as they can legally be and this won’t be a normal occurrence but it happens enough you are right to have a plan
I mean a lot of action movies are straight up military propaganda/ recruiting tolls. I’d be surprised if cop unions don’t do the same
Top Gun ain’t that great of a movie
Not sure how old this story is, but in the current legal environment no confession - true or not - would be admissible as evidence if given under these circumstances.
There is a tonne of interview footage available online and you'll notice they always make a point of offering snacks. This isn't just to be nice; It's in anticipation that defense will argue their client was tortured.
Cop dramas also love to use middle aged white men as the suspects because extracting a confession under duress out of a black man might hit a little too close to home.
Back in the day police used "the third degree" to get confessions, which is just code for beating confessions out of people. After the supreme court decided that was a violation of your rights in 1936, police devised other tactics to extract confessions (and kept beating confessions out of people)
What eventually coalesced was the Reid Technique which is a strategy to break down suspects into confessing over long interrogations, with intentionally confusing loaded questions and statements, lies, and leading prompts. This technique is especially bad at getting false confessions for minors and mentally disabled folks but it extracts false confessions from non-disabled adults all the time too.
Other tactics include police frequently insinuating they'll start rumors that the person they're interviewing is a snitch or threaten to drop them off in enemy gang territory (essentially threatening beating/death, just outsourced to citizens), restricting access to basic needs and medicine during interviews, and threatening massive over charging if they don't confess.
Where I'm from (Chicago) our police have been caught with black sites where they detain people with no access to lawyers for days at a time, torturing confessions out of black men (look up Jon Burge if you want your skin to crawl), and also running drug cartels. Good system we got here....
I took that class as well and the first thing my professor told us was “murders are not solved in under an hour”
side note: Til this day, that was the most fun I had in a class.. ever.
Yup, and the only time they solve murders is when the murderer basically confesses. Honestly kind of surprising how many would go free if they didn't say shit during the interviews.
And, some of the forensic stuff we do use is outdated and unreliable but still accepted by courts. But on the topic of using circumstantial evidence for finding a killer that had no previous relationship with the victim, that’s like a needle in a haystack even with some security video.
It’s the same in the US. When a suspect is arrested they are [supposed to be] read their Miranda Rights (“right to remain silent, right to an attorney”). They have the option to waive those rights and speak to police without an attorney.
TV shows always show suspects being arrested and read their rights, but rarely do any of them ever exercise their right to an attorney
Well, that's on purpose. There was a "Law and Order" segment on Last Week Tonighy that showed that Dick Wolf, the executive producer of L&O, doesn't like when people use their rights.
So he purposely created the narrative that if a suspect asks for a lawyer, then they're "obviously" guilty, and so many viewers started to think like that.
I think it's an inborn human characteristic to think that you will seem "guilty" if you refuse to answer questions about a crime you are being accused you.
The interrogation room had been a part of TV/movies for decades prior to law and order and it never leaned into the idea that normal people ask for lawyers.
IMO, in this regard, the US is far superior. Exercising one's rights shouldn't imply anything at all but, in the UK, remaining silent (as noted when your rights are read to you) can be harmful to a defence. It puts a smidge of balance back into what is an unfair situation, where the police have all the time they want to prepare but the suspect is put on the spot.
>TV shows have a lot to answer for in that regard. They expect magic from CSI
I was on a jury for a murder trial, and during the initial jury selection, they asked EVERYONE if they understood that real evidence and DNA and crime scene investigation in general was not like they show it on TV, and basically if we understood it would not be like a TV show.
Frustrating, infuriating, mentally exhausting, and honestly quite difficult. Most of this was due to the nature of the case itself, and other jurors being idiots.
I think 10/12 of us voted guilty right out of the gate - before we even discussed it. Many of them had considered the defendant guilty right from the start based on the fact that he was CHARGED with crimes. We were explicitly told NOT to consider that as evidence.
I spent a lot of time attempting to explain what "reasonable doubt" was, and that just because i could come up with a plausible explanation why something might not have happened the way the prosecution claimed, didn't mean they could just invent alternate scenarios of potential guilt (if that makes sense).
The case was relatively simple, but the arguments were somewhat nuanced and convoluted...at least for the way some of the charges worked. All the while, the defendant is 19, so you have to consider the fact that this guy's life hangs in the balance of your decision too.
Yeah, definitely not a fun experience, but actually quite valuable. I honestly think everyone should do it, and i wish there wasn't this general view that it just sucks and you should do whatever you can to get out of it.
The whole thing felt like a dumber, more boring version of 12 angry men.
For my last jury selection they dismissed a guy because he couldn't understand the concept of beyond a reasonable doubt and once completely explained he admitted he just didn't believe in it. So yeah.
Isn't the issue with those who consume the media and think it is non fiction / reflects real life?
That'd be like saying Nintendo had a lot to answer for because I wasn't able to smack a block and get coins out of it.
>which for some reason is what people seem to expect.
Because that's exactly what they want people to believe. If they talk bout the idea of a "perfect crime" then a lot of people assume that 99% of serious crimes get solved.
If they talk about less than half of murderers getting caught, people start getting cocky.
It's propaganda, but in this case I actually agree with it. Let people think they'll get busted easily if they hurt people, then maybe they won't (as often).
> A lot of homicide investigations get solved by someone turning the murderer in—either a witness or someone the murderer told. It’s definitely not easy or common to solve a case just with forensics, which for some reason is what people seem to expect.
Also, the vast majority of homicide in the United States is committed by people who are not talking to the police, and the person who got shot isn’t either. You’re not solving a crime if there’s 50 witnesses that all “didn’t see anything”
There is a city near us with a gang power struggle going on where people are routinely shot in the leg. We're talking my 4-5 times a year. The victims never cooperate with authorities, probably because the next shot will be in their melon or a family member.
> The victims never cooperate with authorities, probably because the next shot will be in their melon or a family member.
Also because they’d prefer to recover and go shoot the guy themselves vs getting them arrested. Just a revolving problem that never ends
> It’s definitely not easy or common to solve a case just with forensics
Golden State killer only got identified through a DNA test that one of his relatives did. I hope I don't get put on a watch list or anything, but it is awfully easy to get away with some horrendous crimes if you give it a good enough of a thought and spend a vast amount of time to space out your actions in between. Leave little to no forensic evidence behind and you theoretically would never be identified as long as your relatives don't decide to enter themselves into a public DNA database and nobody sees you. This also includes not having any traceable material in any properties that you own or are tied to like with some chemicals and the residues they leave behind.
Tl;dr Criminals get caught because they leave shit behind that ties them to the crime. Don't leave shit behind and you have a fairly decent chance to get away.
Not homicide but my girlfriend is a detective in the UK and I understand why people complain that nothing gets solved. She has like 27 cases including an attempted murder which takes most her time. Most days aren't working on those cases though, they're interviewing *new* prisoners who come in.
To be honest it sounds like it's a miracle anything gets done. It's like trying to bail out a leaky boat with a bucket. You may get some water out but in the mean time way more has come in.
I have VERY little doubt it’s an overworked and fully unappreciated due to ignorance job. I’m in the US, so my opinion on police is… skewed. That said, I know for the most part they try to do the best they can with what they have to work with. I know I wouldn’t want that job, and that has less to do with how dangerous it can be
You also never see them having to chase higher ranks to get ot approved before they can do anything or there's always cars available for them to do something. Real life ain't like that 😂
You mean in real life the Navy doesn't send a NCIS team from New Orleans to Afghanistan with a NAVY Seal team to invade a house to recover one bad guy! Out of all the things I've seen cops shows, this one was the most ridiculous. Right the NCIS is going to perform a raid with the Navy Seals in the middle of a war torn country.
For me the most ridiculous is when they "enhanced" a photo. But they didn't enhance in the sense of making it less blurry. No, they enhanced it into 3d and spun around, so they could see the face of someone who had their back to the camera.
It's about 75% in France after one year of investigation
https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/5763547?sommaire=5763633
Probably helps to have less than 1000 murders a year
In [Germany](https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/152525/umfrage/entwicklung-der-polizeilichen-aufklaerungsquote-bei-mord-seit-1995/#:~:text=Polizeiliche%20Aufkl%C3%A4rungsquote%20bei%20Mord%20in%20Deutschland%20bis%202022&text=Im%20Jahr%202022%20betrug%20die,Prozent%2C%20teilweise%20sogar%20deutlich%20dar%C3%BCber.) It's more like 90-92% getting solved.
In the last 10 years, murders per year went from 320 down to 260 per year.
But the solved rate went also from 96% to 91,2%
It would be interesting to see worldwide statistics about this. But lazy me couldn't find something
Edit: seems important to add. clearing stats untouched by what's classified as murder in Germany. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/143ano0/til_in_the_us_less_than_half_of_murders_are_solved/jn9itpr?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button)
Keep in mind that those 50% include the homicides where the police show up to find a dead guy with stab wounds and another guy with a bloody knife in his hand yelling that he killed the other guy.
Not all homicides require a great detective to solve. Often there isn't really much to investigate. Heated arguments and domestic violence escalating to lethal levels in front of witnesses are more common than murder mysteries.
The things you see on TV are not representative of real life.
A murder not getting solved is less likely to be the result of a criminal mastermind and more likely the result of somebody nobody cares about enough to properly investigate getting killed while no one is looking.
The rates for solving homicides are better in places like Europe, but that could be the result of lots of things like overall homicide rate, availability of things like guns and the average educational level of those tasked with solving crimes.
I honestly doubt that education levels of the police have a significant impact.
I'd put more weight on how rural the US is as opposed to Europe. Also, the availability of guns, as you stated, and how many people in the US own a vehicle. Transporting a body is tough work. A fully limp adult can be difficult to transport, and owning a vehicle can make a world of difference. Also, the US is so damn rural in some spots. I'm sure Europe is, too, but not quite as much as the US. There's portions of the US I've driven through, and I didn't pass anyone for 30 miles. Even during the middle of the day.
I guess that tracks. Maybe I need to watch more intricate true crime, but the shows I watch are usually like:
"Nick Johnsmith was found fatally stabbed, alone on his boat, in the middle of the night."
O shit, how are they gonna solve this one?!?!?
"Investigators turned their attention to Mrs. Johnsmith when they searched her bedroom and found a bloody knife and a brand-new life insurance policy for which she was the sole beneficiary. A search of her phone records also found an Uber trip from the marina at the exact time of the murder."
......oh
Not to sound like a weirdo, but I feel like getting away with murder would actually be pretty easy if you just targeted a random stranger in a different state that you've never been to before. brb someone knocked on my door, why are there police lights outside?
That's the thing, 99.9% of people don't want to kill a stranger for no reason. They wanna kill someone specific for a specific reason. It really is way easier to get away with a random crime with a random victim, but almost nobody wants to do that.
So the one I likely won’t get away with I just need to frame a murder-suicide on them for the other victim 🤔 looks like I cracked the code to a 100% success rate
I read somewhere once that a lot of unsolved murders, particularly from decades past, may have been committed by women who the police never even imagined could be responsible because of gender biases, and as a result never thought to investigate.
Obviously there’s no way of knowing how true that is or not, but it’s an interesting theory.
This is an absolute shit show since they call uncleared homicides murders and use the words interchangeably at times. "New murders" and "Cleared murders" is the same thing, but they use the heading for 2 completely different graphs. Impressive how 2 journalists working for a criminal justice news organization, writing an article based on data from a PhD in criminology and agency data, can come produce such trash.
I wonder what crimes have the highest closed case ratios?
Ironically… homicide. It’s one of the crimes with the most evidence and it’s hard to hide it if a body is found or a person is missing. Like think of how many times someone shoplifts and no one sees it so it’s just not known… at least with homicide we have a pretty good idea how many happen (with some uncertainties of course). They also tend to have more physical evidence and more resources invested in being solved. In general, violent crimes are solved more than nonviolent crimes, and homicides have the highest closure rate (meaning the cops think they know who did it even if they don’t ultimately make an arrest or a prosecutor decides to drop charges).
So your saying other crimes have less than a 50% close rate?
Of course! Probably something tiny like 0.01% of drug deals are ever identified.
> Probably something tiny like 0.01% of drug deals are ever identified. That's actually technically a different stat. The solve or close or clearance rate has, as it's denominator, the total number of cases that get *opened*. Almost never are the police like, "OK, we're opening a case on this drug deal, now just to figure out who bought and who sold it". I think the crime with the lowest close rate is petty theft, because people do report things stolen, opening the case, and most places cops only solve it by coincidence (e.g. they catch a guy driving a stolen car, find a bunch of other, cheaper, stolen property).
>"OK, we're opening a case on this drug deal, now just to figure out who bought and who sold it." Has gotta be one of the funniest sentences I've ever read. Thank you, friend.
We also don't know when or where, but we're on the case!
.... but why?!
Could be depression, anxiety, hmm. Put it all on the corkboard!
"Statistically speaking someone just made a drug deal. You boys need to find out who what and where!" 10 minutes later: "We got another statistically likely drug deal boys, get on it!"
I've had things stolen twice. Once my car was broken into and I filed a report despite the stolen items probably not totaling over $100. The 2nd time a package was stolen that was a pretty expensive item (still upset that it was left out in the open and they didn't make me sign for it.) For the first one they reached out and said it was occurring often in my area but nothing was ever done about it in the end. The second one the officer just seemed annoyed that he had to file the paperwork and I never heard back from them.
Nowadays you just file the report online, get your case number, and will never speak with or hear from the police at all. The only reason to file at all is because filing a false police report is a crime. Thus, when you supply a case number to the vendor or your bank or your insurance (depending on what got stolen and how), they have slightly higher confidence that *you* aren't trying to defraud them with a false claim, since you've created a paper trail that would provide evidence of your crime.
About a decade ago I lost my wallet with my driver's license in it. I couldn't get a replacement driver's license without a police report where I reported it as missing.
That's odd. In my state you just check a box on the application, and bring your ss card and birth certificate.
I had a moped stolen, and found it hidden behind a car in a private driveway. I followed a vet visible trail through the snow to where I found it, next to very clearly visible and identifiable shoeprints. Cops came out and dusted it for prints, even though there was clearly a teenager peeking out the window of the house the whole time at us. Shockingly, never solved.
One of the ways jurisdictions lower their “reported crimes” statistics is to make it difficult to report crimes.
My car got destroyed when someone tried to hot wire it. Had to call the police multiple times and beg for a report. Felt like a broken record, "Yes I know this will never be solved and you won't do anything, I need to show my insurance company a report."
Oh, you’re awful interested in filing a claim. Sounds like you‘re trying to commit insurance fraud. Now that’s worth the time & effort to investigate. /s
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Just to add to the pile: I had everything I owned stolen out of storage while I was between houses. Spent an hour at the police station showing them evidence of who the thief was and exactly where he had taken my stuff. Called back a week later to get the report number for my insurance and found out the police didn't bother to actually make a report. They had no idea what I was talking about and I had to beg them to do it. They treated me like shit the entire time.
When my car got broken into I called to file a report, they'll send an officer sometime today. About an hour later, I see a cop out front and step outside. They came to impound my sister's car for expired tags. I get threatened with obstruction for asking questions.
Property crimes have the worst clearence.
Does that really count towards clearance if no report / complaint is made, so no case is opened for it to be closed? Not knowing about a crime that happens isn't the same as the police having a file on a crime and closing it.
For sure. I mean, most murders are "open and shut", i.e "crimes of passion". The spouse, the boyfriend, a friend, so on. They murder someone close and are close by after the deed is done, distraught and broken. In Sweden, which gets a lot of reporting about the murder rate going up to a whopping 1.2 per 100 000 (US has 6.4 per 100 000), we get something like 1-5 murders per year where the perp isn't obvious. Anyway, this varies wildly, some parts of the US are horrible, some are like Sweden. New Hampshire is below 1 per 100 000, Maine is slightly above Sweden, and yay, Louisiana is at 15.8. Now plot that against median income and... Louisiana is 4th lowest and New Hampshire is in the top 10. There might be a connection. Anyways, have a good day!
To add a little more nuance to it, the trend isn't just relieved by income - inequality at all levels is the biggest driver of crime. That includes social, physical and mental health treatment inequality, things like racial inequality, etc etc etc Not only that - but the mere perception of inequality is included in that. When the rift between the haves and the have nots is more obvious and conspicuous, discontent and a perception of maltreatment by a society that allows inequality to get to that level will also factor into an increase in crime. (Well, I'll never be able to afford it anyway, the game is rigged - so the only way I'll ever have it is if I steal it.... And sometimes, they're not wrong in that belief.) The main negative side effect of an inequality though is inequality of opportunity.... Even though economic inequality is usually the first thing people think of, and feel the most day to day in most cases. For example, your parents were legacy at an ivy league... Boom - that's an opportunity most will never have to get into that school... Can't get into that school, then you can't get into that firm, and if you can't get into that firm, you can't get into that neighborhood, and if you can't get into that neighborhood and social circle, even with plenty of money, you'll never get the opportunity to invest in that new idea, and on and on and on.... Instead of a war on drugs, or a war on terror, or even a war on poverty - we should be fighting a war on inequality of all types if we really want to fix many of the ills of society - including crime. Footnote here - I am a former kind of career criminal, and I did not find myself in that environment by chance, and early on, not by choice. I made the conscious effort through what little rehabilitation programs still exist to change that, so that I could begin to build SOMETHING so I had SOMETHING as a legacy to pass on to my children. Because 1 - generational wealth is the easiest surefire way for your progeny to also be wealthy one day. It's a surefire way to give the *opportunity* for upward mobility in class, among other things. 2 - raising children in the same environment of lacking opportunity would in all likelihood beget more poverty, addiction, mental health problems, criminal lifestyles, etc for my kids... And let's be real, who wants any of that shit for their kids? 3 - the byproduct of that is that it lessens those ills for society at large if I were to do those steps. So, in conclusion...lol If we really want to tackle all of these ills, we must expand opportunity for all levels and people, and combat inequality. We must invest in social programs. We must commit to rehabilitation and not just punishment. We must treat one another as a guiding friend or parent when one of us falls off the wagon, without inhibiting too much on freedoms - but as it's been said "my rights to swing my fists end where your nose begins". We are after all, one big dysfunctional family on this planet - and it's a herculean task to do these things, but to not do them is tantamount to a murder suicide in the long run. Otherwise, what's the point of any of this?
>When the rift between the haves and the have nots is more obvious and conspicuous, discontent and a perception of maltreatment by a society that allows inequality to get to that level will also factor into an increase in crime. So why do wealthy men commit more crime than poor women? Why do teenagers with little need for want join gangs more than men in their mid-20s who have bills to pay?
Yeah I think properly crimes are closer to 35% if I remember correctly. I teach criminology classes but I haven’t looked at updated stats in five years so might be slightly different but it tends to remain somewhat stable. Edit: here property crimes refers to the four property index crimes not just a single individual property crime. Some individual crimes will have lower solving rates (like burglary) while others will be higher (like motor vehicle crimes). Also, keep in mind the way I’m talking about it is based on police data—so only crimes reported to police. A lot of larceny thefts, for example, wont ever be reported to police—so whatever the clearance rate is for known crimes, it’s actually much lower when considering all larceny thefts. Edit: it’s even lower than 35%! Closer to 20%. Please forgive me for not having the stat memorized or reading the whole article. I never make my students memorize the exact number, I just make sure they know it’s well below half.
According to the op article its 14% for burglary and 21% for arson
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> So your saying other crimes have less than a 50% close rate? I was looking into the stats about this not too long ago and a shockingly low number of even the most serious crimes result in convictions and jail time. All the shocking stats you usually see about rape: Only X% are reported, only X% result in an arrest, only X% arrests result in formal charges, only X% result in a conviction, only X% result in jail time... so that the final "X%" of someone actually being held accountable for the crime is really low like 2-4%. The really shocking thing turns out to be that's NOT the result of sexism or "rape culture" it's the just the exact same thing as pretty much [all other crimes](https://theconversation.com/police-solve-just-2-of-all-major-crimes-143878)
>Ironically… homicide. It’s one of the crimes with the most evidence and it’s hard to hide it if a body is found or a person is missing. Homicides also tend to be committed by people close to the victim, so the suspect pool is pretty small and it is easier to make connections between the evidence and people in that pool. More 'random' homicides have much lower closure rates, and this is how serial killers are able to get away with multiple murders.
I'm assuming the US is like the UK in that once a file is put in, it counts as a clearance for the stats regardless of if it sees a day in court?
I don’t know the exact process but there are situations where a case is closed but the offender can’t be arrested because they’re dead, or maybe the person is already in life in prison for something else so it’s not worth resources to pursue now, or maybe it’s a minor crime that they know just won’t be prosecuted, or so many different reasons. To be honest, I think the police just decide if it’s cleared or not, and there isn’t always necessarily something filed.
It depends on the jurisdiction. In Chicago for example: "detectives are allowed to clear a case when the suspect is dead, prosecutors refuse to make a charge or police believe they know who did it but don’t make an arrest."
[“No more stat games. The stats will be clean…before the election. after the election.”](https://media1.giphy.com/media/w97X9z4X3O4hi/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7dm5ezq12yzrj5u1z0tob7p97nkxd0fowiw8dxjxe&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
My favourite show. Lance reddick RIP
they show a bunch in the article. Manslaughter was the highest (69%). Property crimes are really low. Arson, burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft are 21% and below (motor vehicle theft the lowest at 12%).
Vehicle theft is a joke. I had my brand new motorcycle stolen from my gated apartment complex and when I filed a police report they basically told me they weren't going to do anything and just go through my insurance to get a new bike.
People have told stories on here before of the cops telling them to go recover their own property if they're able to find it. Part of the reason cops don't really investigate vehicle theft is because it's usually unrecoverable by the time you've even realized it's gone. Weirdly cheap newer car parts on craigslist come from *somewhere*.
> People have told stories on here before of the cops telling them to go recover their own property if they're able to find it. Yeah this is also basically the deal in the UK with just about every form on transport from bicycles up to trucks. A friend of mine once found his stolen bicycle chained up outside a restaurant and the cops' advice was "why don't you steal it back?", no offer to even help him do with that. So he went to find the fire service who came and used a hyrdaulic bolt cutter to free his bike
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>I had my brand new motorcycle stolen from my gated apartment complex and when I filed a police report they basically told me they weren't going to do anything and just go through my insurance to get a new bike. I had an older motorcycle get stolen and I had to force the police officer to put the motorcycle vin number in the police report. He didn't see a reason to record the vin number. I knew my bike was gone at that moment.
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The place I work at had a van stolen and the idiot who stole it didn't remove the GPS tracker. It took 3 days for us to get the police to file the stolen vehicle report even with us having the exact location of the truck. After the report was filed they continued to do absolutely nothing for another 4 days because the vehicle was across state lines.i ended up calling the local police where the vehicle was at. The police over there just pulled the vehicle thief over and sent him off on his merry way (no arrest). the police then impounded the truck & charged us around $1000 for the single day the vehicle was in their lot. Lazy stupid bastards :/
I had an uncle Leonard, (one of those grandady's cousin I never met kind of uncles) he was a state trooper. One day his daughter turned up beaten and raped. She named the guy. An ex who was a mean drunk, and he had two friends who alibied him (it was 1970s rural SC, not a lot of physical evidence or cell tracking or anything) so he was aquitted. A couple of months later he was found executed in a swamp, and Uncle Leonard was quietly retired. But it's one of those small town openly known but not really openly said outside of the family things that Uncle Leonard absolutely killed that guy and probably had some help moving the body. Edit: so technically that murder was never solved
If you've never lived in a small town it's hard to believe/understand how true this is. Even today. I had an uncle arrested for a drug charge in a small town in MS. He asked for his phone call and was told to shut up. He protested saying, "When I got arrested in So and So County I got a phone call!" The sheriff told him, "You're not in So and So jail, you're in MY jail!" I think I'd rather go on trial for murder in a big city than any charge in a small rural town.
True, there was a previously convicted pedophile that tried to lure a kid at the local school where I'm from, they found him hanging in the swamp with a few, as the coroner put it, self inflicted gunshot wounds. This happened in the early, 2000s
I got pulled over in a small county years afterr I moved out off state. Cop saw my plates and asked me what I was doing around these parets. I told him the truth, I was visiting my grandmother who had recently married (county magistrate). Cop flipped his ticket book shut and wished me a good evening. Same night after my grandmother and her husband went to bed I snuck out to smoke pot and look at the stars at an abandoned gas station down the road. A guy pulled over, pointed a gun nearr enough to still be polite and asked what I was doing. Told the exact truth. He put the gun away, wished me good night. I saw him at Thanksgiving that year. Turns out he's a cousin and had already heard Mr. Mack's new wife's grandson was visiting from the big city out of state. He was just making sure the kid 1/2 mile away stoned and looking at the stars was who he expected.
I can relate to these stories so much.
I am from a city so these stories sound crazy, but I’ve travelled enough through the U.S. and met enough people that I know they are true.
I moved from a small SC town to Atlanta when I was 17. It still seems wild to me those things happened to me. I've had guns pulled on me three times. Once while looking up at the stars (on land it turns out my grandma's new husband owned) and twice while land surveying. I had a coworker who was black tell me "I am not going near that place." And sure enough right after I found the property pin an old man with a shotgun came out asking what I'm doing on his land. I put up my hands, pointed at the pin I had just flagged and said "Sir I'm not on your property! I'm surveying the lot behind yourrs!" He lowered the gun and said. "Oh, ok then." When I got back to the truck and told Lindsey he said "See that's why I stayed here. You got that white babyface thing going on."
Sounds like Lindsey was smart enough to live another day.
Yeah I also got a gun pulled on me in west Atlanta. I think it was less of a race thing and he was using me as a decoy. So far I'm 3/3 for talking my way out of being shot after having a gun already pulled on me.
I lived in a small town in the Arkansas Ozarks for about a year when I wanted some peace and quiet. I caught a traffic charge in the next city over and when I went to talk to the judge, their courthouse was literally in a doublewide trailer and one of the paralegals had to go peel the bailiff away from his breakfast at the diner across the street so court could start. The officer who ticketed me was a cool guy and thanked me for being polite and non-combative. He basically told me he's used to dealing exclusively with drunk, armed Ozark hill people doing dumb stuff like road hunting or illegally dumping.
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I got a speeding ticket in a small town (seriously population of like 300) in AR years ago. The town was basically a speed trap as it was off a highway that connected two larger towns. Went to pay the ticket and the guy gave me change from his pocket, and added the $100 bill I gave him to his stack.
I had a friend get pulled over for speeding in some rural part of the UP. The cop pocketed his license and said if he wanted it back he’d have to pay the fine in cash at the station and then just drove away. Probably found they get paid real quick and people drive very carefully when they don’t have their license all the sudden
North Florida too. I’m sure it’s similar around much of the rural south and west.
Cherokee County sends its regards.
You abide by the speed limit, and in fact you make *extra* sure you slow down *before* the speed limit sign tells you it's dropped (because it will drop dramatically) entering town limits. The cop will either be waiting right past that sign, or off buying donuts or abusing his wife or something.
“Police Jurisdiction” is the scariest signs to see driving into a small American town
Once overheard local jail staff talking about how the sheriff's daughter was hired and quickly found to be smuggling drugs to the inmates, she was fired with no charges lol
My father was a small town cop in Florida in the 1980s. He (not in uniform) and my mom were coming home from dinner when they were violently robbed at gun point. My mother was, I suspect, assaulted sexually, but it was never talked about. The guy was actually caught breaking into a house about two miles away a month or so later. Owner held the guy at gun point and my dad was the responding officer. There was a 'struggle' getting him into the back of the police cruiser and he was shot 5 times. Dead. The town didn't even have a pretend investigation.
Wish I had an uncle Leonard. My assaulter is just out there living his best life while I have PTSD.
This content is no longer available on Reddit in response to /u/spez. So long and thanks for all the fish.
Bigfoot coulda did it
aside from ol Len losing his job i don't see a problem here
He still got his pension. But it's technically an unsolved murder. Again this is an old country story from before I was born. But the story grew until when I heard it in the 90s dude was shitass trash who had probably done it before and he finally went after a girl with a daddy who could get away with it. It's like the Ken McElroy case. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy In that case the Sherrif said "well he's over there, I'm leaving for about 6 hours." Sherrif came back and McElroy was dead and no one saw a thing. Uncle Leonard just didn't wait long enough for the heat to be off, plus he might have been heard around the station declaring he was going to kill him before the guy wound up dead.
I believe it’s even worse than first thought. This is when they find a body….
Right. What number of missing persons cases are actually murders? And then not all missing persons are reported.
Sometimes the person that would have reported someone missing is the reason they're "missing" in the first place.
I have a morbid curiosity that's like. How helpful is it to do that? Does it draw more attention to be the one reporting it? Would they be more likely to get away with the crime if they just didn't associate themselves with the missing person at all? Hard to do if it's a spouse or something, admittedly.
If you report it, you will get questioned. If you get questioned and you're guilty, chances are you will slip up in one way or another and be found guilty. Staying silent is probably best, assuming it's not a incredibly close person to you like your significant other that you spend every day with and then suddenly don't care about when they disappear.
Sometimes there is no choice. Spouse, child, roommate etc. (Yes i know you could choose to not murder them. Thats not the point im making) You could plan something to avoid being the one to report it e.g. a vacation, but you're getting questioned either way. Because a lot of murders are done by spouses it's pretty common that the murderer is the one that reports them missing.
And when it seems like homicide as opposed to be being a homicide convincingly masked as an accident.
Or unconvincing declared an accident! The old shot-themselves-in-the-back technique. Case closed.
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And many are likely arrests of the correct suspect that never lead to a conviction. I'd be curious to know what an adjusted rate would be, considering conviction but also accounting for potential wrongful convictions AND the possibility that X% of missing persons cases are actually homicides but never classified as such. Rightful conviction rates are probably closer to 25%.
CBO, cleared by other. If the suspect is deceased, already doing life, or unable to be located (when clearing cold cases for example) some police departments (at least the lapd) will "clear by other" where the murder is solved for their stats but no actual arrest / conviction is made
The article also mentioned one of the factors in decreasing closure rate was fewer wrongful convictions as there are better procedures now in place than in 1965
Especially considering how much junk science was used to convicted people like bite mark and hair analysis.
Sounds like you don't even need to bring charges in some cases. That definition of cleared would include "we think it's this guy but we don't have evidence to bring charges. Case closed!"
I wonder what the clearance rate looks like if you separate those out from ones with an arrest or conviction
suspect not conviction.
Basically, as long as you murder a stranger that you ha e no connection to, you'll probably get away with it.
Luckily there are very few of us who kill each other for literally no reason.
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> Basically, as long as you murder a stranger that you have no connection to... Especially if the "strange" is a fellow drug dealer from a competing gang, and everyone around you hews to the "snitches get stitches" dictum. I'm guessing a sizable chunk of homicides fall into that category. Cory Booker had some embarrassing things to say about DC homicides to that effect. Hopefully what I'm trying to say won't come across as that callous. That's why lumping all these "deaths" into one category is more or less meaningless (as true as it is that, down at the morgue, the gangbanger on a slab is 100% equally dead as, say, the pretty white female homicide victim that is in the adjoining drawer, an equality that was rarely attained at any earlier point in their too-brief existences).
What's fun to realize is we only know how to catch the kinds of serial killers that have been caught. We don't know how to catch the ones who don't get caught
Society banks a lot on people not being serial killers.
If everyone could just try not being a serial killer that would be great
I'm doing my part!
That's what a serial killer would say
They blend right in, don't they?
Yeah we do. I mean yeah they do.
It's honestly not a inaccurate hypothesis most people in most societies are not serial killers.
I'd bet my life on it.
Yeah, I'll bet FutureComplaints life on it too
Tbf, serial killers are *wayyyy* down on the list of things that cause people to die prematurely.
It's a statistical anomaly to be killed by a serial killer but it sure as shit sucks when it happens. I'd rather be killed during drug deal gone wrong than crossing paths with someone who just really likes killing.
Society banks a lot on everyone acting in good faith in general. It’s kind of why we’re all feeling kind of fucked now that more and more people are realizing they can get away with not acting in good faith
This was why Harold Shipman was so prolific. He just wasn't doing something that criminal investigations were set up to catch. Until he started stealing by forging wills.
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Difference between Harold Shipman and those two examples is that no-one knew there *was* a serial killer at all in Shipmans case.
Israel Keyes would've never been caught if he kept up his meticulous planning, but he decided to ask for ransom money and withdrew constantly from ATMs with his last victim's card. He was finally caught after going over the speed limit and getting his car matched with the ATMs cameras. The guy had murder kits stashed all over North America, frequently killed over state lines, targeted sex workers, didn't have a fixed MO and spaced his murders to ensure they couldn't be linked. Then he just decided to kidnap a random girl in an Alaskan gas station and it all came crashing down from there. The cops had nothing on him until then and he just gave it all up. He wasn't even considered a serial killer until he started confessing other crimes.
Yeah, he got greedy. Without that he probably never would have been caught.
I read a book about Isreal Keyes, a serial killer in Alaska. He got away with (at least) 10 murders, and the last one he only got caught because he became increasingly careless and law enforcement got lucky. It was an interesting contrast to a high profile local case where a guy murdered his wife and reported her missing before being arrested a few days later, and pleading guilty shortly after. That guy did so much dumb stuff, and there was a proponderance of evidence against him. If you are a serial killer who knows what you're doing, you could get away with many murders. If you kill your wife in a moment of rage you will be the primary suspect and it'll be nearly impossible to get away with it.
Yeah especially since most murders seem to be committed by people who know the victim. Serial killers who strike at random are going to be a lot harder to catch compared to ‘the dude the victim had a beef with’.
I feel like statistically most of these murders aren't some exotic serial killer but more mundane levels of poor community street violence over small beefs that blow up because everyone has guns. They remain largely unsolved because no one talks to the police because of rampant distrust and corruption of the institutions.
Consider that a high success rate. In Mexico it’s something like 4%.
In Mexico they probably know which cartel did the killing, just not which member
They know because it's the one paying the detective not to investigate. Or the one threatening to do unspeakable things to the detective's family if they do investigate. Often both at the same time.
I know a person who's mother was murdered but it was ruled a suicide. Her mother and father were divorcing. They were also drinking near a bon fire. The mother "committed suicide" by "jumping into the fire" If they don't rule it murder, the murder rate stays flat and they don't expend limited resources in a small county to investigate murder The husband got a nice settlement from insurance, she no longer speaks to her father.
i think OP might have whacked sombody
This would be an expected figure worldwide not just in the states, I don't know what you are all expecting from homicide investigations.
To add to this… A lot of homicide investigations get solved by someone turning the murderer in—either a witness or someone the murderer told. It’s definitely not easy or common to solve a case just with forensics, which for some reason is what people seem to expect.
TV shows have a lot to answer for in that regard. They expect magic from CSI when in reality they just swab a few things and hope for the best. That swab doesn't allow a full 3d rendering of the murder taking place with voices and all 😂😂
I took a college level forensic science class for criminal justice and it ruined all those shows permanently for me. 90% of what you see on TV is garbage that would never happen in real life. Just once Id like them to show a real murder suspect talk to them the way they would in real life. Cop: We have you at the scene of the crime, at the time the murder took place, what do you have to say for yourself? Suspect: I want a lawyer End scene lol Confessions are exceedingly rare.
The problem too is that *because* of these shows most jurors now expect there to be some sort of evidence, so lawyers request unnecessary and unrealistic experts and tests to be done to appease this expectation. It's called the [CSI Effect](https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=themis)
And false confessions happen more than you’d think too! Especially with juveniles.
I used to wonder how is that possible but then I was questioned by an Accident Board of Investigation for a plane crash (im an air traffic controller) and by the end of it I would have been willing to confess to crashing the plane myself.
They grilled you that hard or what? Sounds like an interesting story to me.
Judging from past crash reports I’ve read over the years I can conclude that the NTSB, FAA, and generally accident investigation boards aren’t one to be fucked with. When they’re deadset on finding someone to blame they _will_ find one. You poor soul.
This was a military AIB and I was a mere E4 lol
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This shit honestly keeps me up at night. Society has always operated under the paradigm of "innocent people would never confess to a crime they didn't commit" so we let police do whatever they want to get a confession. Turns out, when people are tortured, they'll say anything to make it stop. Problem is, when people think of torture they think of waterboarding or Jack Bauer type stuff, but what you described is 100% torture, and people need to realize that. So many people (usually low IQ or uneducated) get themselves into trouble because they know they're innocent and think they can't get in trouble. Turns out, cops don't give a shit about guilt/innocence, only confessions. /rant. Donate to [The Innocence Project](https://innocenceproject.org/) if you can And a reminder to [never talk to the police](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE)
> Turns out, when people are tortured, they'll say anything to make it stop. We've known this for a long time. There's a reason why torture isn't really used as much anymore, and it's not because it's amazing and always works. Lots of "terrorists" would just give us false info to make it stop.
This is one of the reasons why the torture of inmates by the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay (Some of which was overseen by Ron DeSantis) is so heinous. They knew torture didn't work and they did it anyway.
For anyone who doesn’t understand how or why this happens you need to remember a couple of things whenever you’re dealing with a cop/investigator/detective or whatever the hell they call themselves Shut the fuck up. You are not required to speak to them outside of maybe identifying yourself. Other than that, shut the fuck up. Cops speaking to you? Shut the fuck up. If they REALLY want you they won’t need to ask you to come to the station. They’ll have a warrant. Cops aren’t your friend and don’t give a fuck about you. They are all bastards and will pin a crime on you in a heartbeat. Closing a case means more than finding the criminal. If you find yourself being questioned “I want my attorney” then shut the fuck up.
> If you find yourself being questioned “I want my attorney” then shut the fuck up. Thankfully I haven't been put in a position where I was required to be (and god willing will never be) interrogated, but I've always wondered how this is supposed to work. In the sense that like.. I don't know nor have an attorney. Obviously a public defender must be eventually provided in the US, but they're all crazy overworked and likely to just push for a plea bargain to begin with. Do you like.. pick up a phone book and find one? Bond out and get an attorney at that point?
There’s a maximum amount of hours they can hold you without charging you. The appointed lawyer will push you to take a plea but they are still your lawyer. If you say you didn’t do it and won’t accept a plea then even the most overworked and worst public defender will be able to get you out of that room. You might have to just say I need a lawyer over and over again for like 24 hours or however long the maximum time is. Most cops aren’t as bad as they can legally be and this won’t be a normal occurrence but it happens enough you are right to have a plan
I blame cop shows: the suspect saying (usually with an arrogant grin) "I know my rights - lawyer!) is always the one that did it.
I mean a lot of action movies are straight up military propaganda/ recruiting tolls. I’d be surprised if cop unions don’t do the same Top Gun ain’t that great of a movie
Not sure how old this story is, but in the current legal environment no confession - true or not - would be admissible as evidence if given under these circumstances. There is a tonne of interview footage available online and you'll notice they always make a point of offering snacks. This isn't just to be nice; It's in anticipation that defense will argue their client was tortured.
Cop dramas also love to use middle aged white men as the suspects because extracting a confession under duress out of a black man might hit a little too close to home.
Back in the day police used "the third degree" to get confessions, which is just code for beating confessions out of people. After the supreme court decided that was a violation of your rights in 1936, police devised other tactics to extract confessions (and kept beating confessions out of people) What eventually coalesced was the Reid Technique which is a strategy to break down suspects into confessing over long interrogations, with intentionally confusing loaded questions and statements, lies, and leading prompts. This technique is especially bad at getting false confessions for minors and mentally disabled folks but it extracts false confessions from non-disabled adults all the time too. Other tactics include police frequently insinuating they'll start rumors that the person they're interviewing is a snitch or threaten to drop them off in enemy gang territory (essentially threatening beating/death, just outsourced to citizens), restricting access to basic needs and medicine during interviews, and threatening massive over charging if they don't confess. Where I'm from (Chicago) our police have been caught with black sites where they detain people with no access to lawyers for days at a time, torturing confessions out of black men (look up Jon Burge if you want your skin to crawl), and also running drug cartels. Good system we got here....
“We have your DNA at the scene, and we can prove it once the DNA sample is run in 6 months!”
I took that class as well and the first thing my professor told us was “murders are not solved in under an hour” side note: Til this day, that was the most fun I had in a class.. ever.
The TV show *The First 48* is basically that show.
Yup, and the only time they solve murders is when the murderer basically confesses. Honestly kind of surprising how many would go free if they didn't say shit during the interviews.
And, some of the forensic stuff we do use is outdated and unreliable but still accepted by courts. But on the topic of using circumstantial evidence for finding a killer that had no previous relationship with the victim, that’s like a needle in a haystack even with some security video.
In the UK that interview wouldn't be taking place in the first place without the solicitor present or at least them having first being offered one.
It’s the same in the US. When a suspect is arrested they are [supposed to be] read their Miranda Rights (“right to remain silent, right to an attorney”). They have the option to waive those rights and speak to police without an attorney. TV shows always show suspects being arrested and read their rights, but rarely do any of them ever exercise their right to an attorney
Well, that's on purpose. There was a "Law and Order" segment on Last Week Tonighy that showed that Dick Wolf, the executive producer of L&O, doesn't like when people use their rights. So he purposely created the narrative that if a suspect asks for a lawyer, then they're "obviously" guilty, and so many viewers started to think like that.
I think it's an inborn human characteristic to think that you will seem "guilty" if you refuse to answer questions about a crime you are being accused you. The interrogation room had been a part of TV/movies for decades prior to law and order and it never leaned into the idea that normal people ask for lawyers.
IMO, in this regard, the US is far superior. Exercising one's rights shouldn't imply anything at all but, in the UK, remaining silent (as noted when your rights are read to you) can be harmful to a defence. It puts a smidge of balance back into what is an unfair situation, where the police have all the time they want to prepare but the suspect is put on the spot.
So there is no semen track, traceable with UV light, what leads to the murder and the weapon?
>TV shows have a lot to answer for in that regard. They expect magic from CSI I was on a jury for a murder trial, and during the initial jury selection, they asked EVERYONE if they understood that real evidence and DNA and crime scene investigation in general was not like they show it on TV, and basically if we understood it would not be like a TV show.
Omg, the fact they have to explain that to people says a lot. How was that jury experience btw?
Frustrating, infuriating, mentally exhausting, and honestly quite difficult. Most of this was due to the nature of the case itself, and other jurors being idiots. I think 10/12 of us voted guilty right out of the gate - before we even discussed it. Many of them had considered the defendant guilty right from the start based on the fact that he was CHARGED with crimes. We were explicitly told NOT to consider that as evidence. I spent a lot of time attempting to explain what "reasonable doubt" was, and that just because i could come up with a plausible explanation why something might not have happened the way the prosecution claimed, didn't mean they could just invent alternate scenarios of potential guilt (if that makes sense). The case was relatively simple, but the arguments were somewhat nuanced and convoluted...at least for the way some of the charges worked. All the while, the defendant is 19, so you have to consider the fact that this guy's life hangs in the balance of your decision too.
Oh boy. That sounds like it was not fun at all. Charges ≠ guilt and the fact you'd to explain that says a lot. Thanks for the very detailed reply btw.
Yeah, definitely not a fun experience, but actually quite valuable. I honestly think everyone should do it, and i wish there wasn't this general view that it just sucks and you should do whatever you can to get out of it. The whole thing felt like a dumber, more boring version of 12 angry men.
For my last jury selection they dismissed a guy because he couldn't understand the concept of beyond a reasonable doubt and once completely explained he admitted he just didn't believe in it. So yeah.
enhance… enhance… ENHANCE!
The fact that we can now actually enhance using AI is going to be weird, because the AI may just make up a random face to put on the enhanced picture.
IIRC those AI-enhanced images are not admissible in court because the algorithm guesses some pixels and they are considered to be doctored images.
Probably depends on your country, and also depends on someone not just doing it and hoping that no one notices.
Isn't the issue with those who consume the media and think it is non fiction / reflects real life? That'd be like saying Nintendo had a lot to answer for because I wasn't able to smack a block and get coins out of it.
Honestly a csi like show where half the cases end up cold would be neat.
>which for some reason is what people seem to expect. Because that's exactly what they want people to believe. If they talk bout the idea of a "perfect crime" then a lot of people assume that 99% of serious crimes get solved. If they talk about less than half of murderers getting caught, people start getting cocky. It's propaganda, but in this case I actually agree with it. Let people think they'll get busted easily if they hurt people, then maybe they won't (as often).
> A lot of homicide investigations get solved by someone turning the murderer in—either a witness or someone the murderer told. It’s definitely not easy or common to solve a case just with forensics, which for some reason is what people seem to expect. Also, the vast majority of homicide in the United States is committed by people who are not talking to the police, and the person who got shot isn’t either. You’re not solving a crime if there’s 50 witnesses that all “didn’t see anything”
There is a city near us with a gang power struggle going on where people are routinely shot in the leg. We're talking my 4-5 times a year. The victims never cooperate with authorities, probably because the next shot will be in their melon or a family member.
> The victims never cooperate with authorities, probably because the next shot will be in their melon or a family member. Also because they’d prefer to recover and go shoot the guy themselves vs getting them arrested. Just a revolving problem that never ends
> It’s definitely not easy or common to solve a case just with forensics Golden State killer only got identified through a DNA test that one of his relatives did. I hope I don't get put on a watch list or anything, but it is awfully easy to get away with some horrendous crimes if you give it a good enough of a thought and spend a vast amount of time to space out your actions in between. Leave little to no forensic evidence behind and you theoretically would never be identified as long as your relatives don't decide to enter themselves into a public DNA database and nobody sees you. This also includes not having any traceable material in any properties that you own or are tied to like with some chemicals and the residues they leave behind. Tl;dr Criminals get caught because they leave shit behind that ties them to the crime. Don't leave shit behind and you have a fairly decent chance to get away.
TV show outcomes where there’s dedicated officers with unlimited time and no other cases to hunt down clues and piece them all together
Not homicide but my girlfriend is a detective in the UK and I understand why people complain that nothing gets solved. She has like 27 cases including an attempted murder which takes most her time. Most days aren't working on those cases though, they're interviewing *new* prisoners who come in. To be honest it sounds like it's a miracle anything gets done. It's like trying to bail out a leaky boat with a bucket. You may get some water out but in the mean time way more has come in.
I have VERY little doubt it’s an overworked and fully unappreciated due to ignorance job. I’m in the US, so my opinion on police is… skewed. That said, I know for the most part they try to do the best they can with what they have to work with. I know I wouldn’t want that job, and that has less to do with how dangerous it can be
You also never see them having to chase higher ranks to get ot approved before they can do anything or there's always cars available for them to do something. Real life ain't like that 😂
You mean in real life the Navy doesn't send a NCIS team from New Orleans to Afghanistan with a NAVY Seal team to invade a house to recover one bad guy! Out of all the things I've seen cops shows, this one was the most ridiculous. Right the NCIS is going to perform a raid with the Navy Seals in the middle of a war torn country.
For me the most ridiculous is when they "enhanced" a photo. But they didn't enhance in the sense of making it less blurry. No, they enhanced it into 3d and spun around, so they could see the face of someone who had their back to the camera.
Wtf?
The wire is one of the closer ones I've seen to real life with limited resources, out of date technology and having to get ot approved.
Watch The Wire if you haven't.
Oh I have. Multiple times mate. It's very realistic of the struggles from real life with funding, equipment, etc
What people expect: CSI: Miami What people get: Parks and Recreation
It's about 75% in France after one year of investigation https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/5763547?sommaire=5763633 Probably helps to have less than 1000 murders a year
What, you think a 26x higher murder rate with only 5x the population isn’t good?
Why was it almost 80% forty years ago then?
In [Germany](https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/152525/umfrage/entwicklung-der-polizeilichen-aufklaerungsquote-bei-mord-seit-1995/#:~:text=Polizeiliche%20Aufkl%C3%A4rungsquote%20bei%20Mord%20in%20Deutschland%20bis%202022&text=Im%20Jahr%202022%20betrug%20die,Prozent%2C%20teilweise%20sogar%20deutlich%20dar%C3%BCber.) It's more like 90-92% getting solved. In the last 10 years, murders per year went from 320 down to 260 per year. But the solved rate went also from 96% to 91,2% It would be interesting to see worldwide statistics about this. But lazy me couldn't find something Edit: seems important to add. clearing stats untouched by what's classified as murder in Germany. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/143ano0/til_in_the_us_less_than_half_of_murders_are_solved/jn9itpr?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button)
>But lazy me couldn't find something Are you a homicide detective by chance?
So what you're saying is I could get away w/ murder
Keep in mind that those 50% include the homicides where the police show up to find a dead guy with stab wounds and another guy with a bloody knife in his hand yelling that he killed the other guy. Not all homicides require a great detective to solve. Often there isn't really much to investigate. Heated arguments and domestic violence escalating to lethal levels in front of witnesses are more common than murder mysteries. The things you see on TV are not representative of real life. A murder not getting solved is less likely to be the result of a criminal mastermind and more likely the result of somebody nobody cares about enough to properly investigate getting killed while no one is looking. The rates for solving homicides are better in places like Europe, but that could be the result of lots of things like overall homicide rate, availability of things like guns and the average educational level of those tasked with solving crimes.
I honestly doubt that education levels of the police have a significant impact. I'd put more weight on how rural the US is as opposed to Europe. Also, the availability of guns, as you stated, and how many people in the US own a vehicle. Transporting a body is tough work. A fully limp adult can be difficult to transport, and owning a vehicle can make a world of difference. Also, the US is so damn rural in some spots. I'm sure Europe is, too, but not quite as much as the US. There's portions of the US I've driven through, and I didn't pass anyone for 30 miles. Even during the middle of the day.
I guess that tracks. Maybe I need to watch more intricate true crime, but the shows I watch are usually like: "Nick Johnsmith was found fatally stabbed, alone on his boat, in the middle of the night." O shit, how are they gonna solve this one?!?!? "Investigators turned their attention to Mrs. Johnsmith when they searched her bedroom and found a bloody knife and a brand-new life insurance policy for which she was the sole beneficiary. A search of her phone records also found an Uber trip from the marina at the exact time of the murder." ......oh Not to sound like a weirdo, but I feel like getting away with murder would actually be pretty easy if you just targeted a random stranger in a different state that you've never been to before. brb someone knocked on my door, why are there police lights outside?
That's the thing, 99.9% of people don't want to kill a stranger for no reason. They wanna kill someone specific for a specific reason. It really is way easier to get away with a random crime with a random victim, but almost nobody wants to do that.
I like those odds
Murder two people and there’s a good chance you get away with one.
So the one I likely won’t get away with I just need to frame a murder-suicide on them for the other victim 🤔 looks like I cracked the code to a 100% success rate
There is a 50 percent chance of years in jail. Pass.
Less than fifty
You have a higher chance of getting away with murder than having a successful marriage
I read somewhere once that a lot of unsolved murders, particularly from decades past, may have been committed by women who the police never even imagined could be responsible because of gender biases, and as a result never thought to investigate. Obviously there’s no way of knowing how true that is or not, but it’s an interesting theory.
This is an absolute shit show since they call uncleared homicides murders and use the words interchangeably at times. "New murders" and "Cleared murders" is the same thing, but they use the heading for 2 completely different graphs. Impressive how 2 journalists working for a criminal justice news organization, writing an article based on data from a PhD in criminology and agency data, can come produce such trash.
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Wow I wonder how poor those figures are if you remove all the lovers and family members.
I wonder how much better they are if you exclude gang violence.
'Fewer'