Between 2014 - 2023 the St Louis Police Solved Fewer than Half the Homicides of Black People but Two-thirds of Cases Involving White victims. Detectives investigating Murders are Overwhelmingly White
From [HERE] The unsolved killings on Shulte Avenue reflect reality in St. Louis. In a city where nearly 90% of homicide victims are Black, police have struggled to solve the killings of Black people.
Between 2014 and 2023, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department solved fewer than half the homicides of Black people but two-thirds of cases involving white victims, according to an analysis of police data by APM Reports, St. Louis Public Radio and The Marshall Project. The news organizations found that the department at times struggled to solve homicides in the past decade partly due to shoddy detective work, staffing shortages and eroding community trust.
St. Louis police officials declined repeated interview requests to discuss the findings.
Some Black community leaders have contended that police aren’t making the same effort to solve crimes involving Black victims as crimes involving white victims.
“These are communities that don’t trust the police,” said community activist Jamala Rogers, co-founder of the Organization for Black Struggle. “These are communities that have had bad relationships and experiences with the police.”
While nearly half of the city’s population is Black, the detectives tasked with investigating homicides overwhelmingly are white.
Families of homicide victims on Shulte Avenue echoed Rogers’ concerns. They said contact with police investigators was short-lived, and they have little hope of ever seeing justice for their loved ones.
“I knew in the beginning they wouldn't be doing anything,” Sherya Hawthorne said. Her son, Travis Hill, was shot and killed in an alley behind a Shulte Avenue home in 2017. Hawthorne said police never talked with her about her son’s death, and she felt there was no point in following up. “I never wanted to keep reliving and reliving and reliving it,” she said.
Hill’s killing is one of about 1,000 unsolved homicides involving Black victims between 2014 and 2023. That’s close to double the enrollment of the high school serving students living in the neighborhoods around Shulte Avenue. [MORE]