In the course of cataloguing all 334 solved and unsolved homicides in 2013, the Daily News has created a series of interactive maps of each case and how the NYPD assigns its detectives to investigate the murders.
Last year Brooklyn saw 77 unsolved murders, the most of any borough, while Manhattan had 15. Yet the Brooklyn North borough command only has 17 homicide detectives to assist the precinct detectives in solving cases (5 per detective) while Manhattan South is able to assign one per detective.
“Manhattan is treated differently than the outer boroughs because that’s where the money is," professor Joseph Giacalone of John Jay College of Criminal Justice tells the paper. Murders in Manahttan “get probably double the amount of cops that you see in Brooklyn…It’s just part of the deal.”
The NYPD's overall homicide clearance rate has stayed constant around 70% for the past ten years, down from over 80% in the late 1990s (by comparison, the NYPD only issues a summons or makes an arrest in around 30% of all traffic fatalities).
In 2000, the NYPD closed 533 murders from that year and previous years. In 2013 the department solved 314.
The president of the detective's union blames the plateau on staffing. Former commissioner Ray Kelly disagrees:
The homicide squads are always pretty well staffed. As a matter of fact they do other things because the number of murders is way down. I think the clearance rate is going to remain at roughly 70%, give or take. That’s just the way it is. There are … certain homicides that will never be solved. We don’t necessarily want to make that public, but that’s just the way it is.
