Statistics show too many people are getting away with the ultimate crime.
By KAREN HAWKINS
Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO — Despite the rise of DNA fingerprinting and other “CSI”-style crime-fighting wizardry, more and more people in this country are getting away with murder. FBI figures reviewed by The Associated Press show that the homicide clearance rate, as detectives call it, dropped from 91 percent in 1963 – the first year records were kept in the manner they are now – to 61 percent in 2007.
Law enforcement officials say the chief reason is a rise in drug- and gang-related killings, which are often impersonal and anonymous, and thus harder to solve than slayings among family members or friends. As a result, police departments are carrying an ever-growing number of “cold-case” murders on their books.
“We have killers walking among us. We have killers living in our neighborhoods,” said Howard Morton, executive director of Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons. “It is a clear threat to public safety to allow these murders to go unsolved.”
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