PoliceLink

Written by APB staff

Witnesses to killings and other violent crimes are refusing to cooperate in law enforcement investigations with such regularity that the phenomenon is driving down the rate of solved murders throughout the country. According to a recent article in USA Today by Kevin Johnson, police aren’t getting the kind of help they used to when it comes to violent crime.

Based on the result of a recent survey of 76 police agencies across the nation by the Police Executive Research Forum, 78 percent cited a decreased willingness to testify among witnesses, and 45 percent reported a drop in the rate of solved cases.

The director of the Trenton, N.J. Police Dept., Joseph Santiago, says the lack of cooperation is evident even in the kinds of crimes that once generated public outrage.

“We’re not getting information from the average person anymore,” Santiago told USA Today. Even as violent crime plunged to historic lows during the past decade, law enforcement experts point out that the murder clearance rate also dropped. In 1998 the national homicide clearance rate was about 69 percent.

In 2006 that number had dropped to 60 percent. FBI spokesman John Miller says criminals have successfully “marketed a climate of fear.” Presumably Mr. Miller was referring to the so-called “stop snitching” movement. Miller described this marketing effort as “a powerful force and not one that some police executives are trained to deal with.”

San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong says the phenomenon is not confined to any one region. According to the article by Kevin Johnson, the trend toward less cooperation from the public is a national crisis. Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan says investigators encounter reluctant witnesses in 30 percent of murder investigations and more than 50 percent of other violent crime inquiries. Dolan says the clearance decline is due in part to “codes of silence.”

In Washington, incidents of witness intimidation were up 45 percent last year, according to Cynthia Wright, chief of the local U.S. attorney’s Victim-Witness Assistance Unit. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis says witnesses’ fear of retaliation was directly related to low murder clearance rates that hovered near 38 percent in that city in 2006.

Davis says the department installed an anonymous text-messaging system last year in order to encourage more tips. Over the last two years, Commissioner Davis doubled the number of investigators and supervisors dispatched to homicide scenes, allowing for more contacts with potential witnesses.

That may be working. Since 2006, the clearance rate has inched up to 40 percent and authorities hope to push it over 50 percent this year.

Chief I hear where you are coming from.

Here in Canada one of the major Cities in Manitoba has an ongoing problem with "NATIVE GANGS", the Manitoba Warriors and the Indian Posse being the 2 highest offenders. In September of last year there was a shooting on a downtown street where there were witnesses and they recieved subpeona's to testify.  Not one of them showed up in Court with the prosecutor saying she had been advised that they were scared of retaliation. The Judge who was sitting this case REFUSED to issue Material Witness warrants, and wouldn't even issue an FTA!!

Another Judge 2 months earlier on a similar case jailed a witness for an additional 3 years for failing to testify against a co accused  from the "MAD COWZ" gang. All 3 of them had been in custody on previous charges, so they couldn't FTA.

I think if the prosecutors would release to the press how many violent actors are being released back to the streets because witnesses are afraid to give testimony may make the people realize that they are doing more harm than good to their families, as next time it could be one of theirs getting killed in a drive by.

As long as the revolving door of justice keeps turning, putting more and more offenders back on the streets quickly, with no time, probation or program.  What needs to be done is have a "First Time, Hard Time" program, to stop the free ride syndrome of young offenders, who laugh at the criminal justice system.  I have seen many offenders not see any jail time, until their forth or fifth conviction.  As the line from the song by Toby Keith and Willie Nelson, "Whisky For My Men, Beer For My Horses,"  goes; "Get all the rope in texas and find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys and hang them high in the tree, for all the people to see."  "Cause Justice is the one thing you should always find."

Build more prisons!