More than a month after former city councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr. was murdered, his case remains unsolved - highlighting a nagging problem for Baltimore police.
Despite a sharp drop in homicides this year, city police are solving murders at the second-lowest rate in 28 years, according to a Sun analysis of police and FBI statistics. In the 1980s, the department routinely solved more than 70 percent of its cases, but so far this year, the rate is 45 percent.
The steady decline in the department's record of catching killers has left hundreds of homicides unresolved. Among them: Nancy Schmidt, a 74-year-old retiree who was stabbed in her Remington home on April 21, and Jerrel Brown, a 31-year-old transgender prostitute who was shot in his home in the 3000 block of W. North Ave. on Jan. 8.
"It's very difficult for parents because we want to protect the next kid, and we can't because they're not solving [cases]," said Fran Sirbaugh, 57, whose daughter, Keri, 21, was found beaten and strangled steps from her Northeast Baltimore apartment in 1995.
The case is now in the hands of the homicide unit's cold case squad.
"I'm not satisfied," said Maj. Terrence McLarney, who took command in July of the city's homicide unit, which has more than 70 people. He would like to see the clearance rate about 15 points higher but pointed out that police are finding other ways to lock up homicide suspects when they can't secure murder charges.
The nation's homicide clearance rate has been declining gradually, but until the mid-1990s, Baltimore's prominent homicide unit performed above average. Now Baltimore's rate is about 10 percentage points below last year's national average for cities of its size.
Detectives, commanders and experts say the reasons for the decline are complex. But they boil down to a homicide unit that was badly damaged by an exodus of veteran talent in the mid-1990s and the subsequent growth of a "stop snitching" culture, said David Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Three years ago, Baltimore's epidemic of uncooperative witnesses became national news with the release of an underground video, Stop Snitching, in which a parade of criminals from the city's drug trade made explicit a long-unspoken culture of silence.
