Bleak statistics piled on top of one another last year. Among them was a spike in violent crime that killed 253 people in Dallas — a 23% increase in homicides compared with 2019.
But one important figure that got lost in the barrage of murder headlines was something worth applauding: the Dallas Police Department’s homicide clearance rate, which reflects how many cases police solved in a year relative to the total homicide tally. The department posted a 78% clearance rate in 2020, keeping that metric steady even as it slipped in police departments in other major cities across the country.
The Dallas police homicide clearance rate is well above the national average of 61%, according to the most recent FBI data from 2019. Homicide unit commander Lt. Lance Hunter praised his detectives and recognized that 78% was a strong number, but not a number he finds acceptable.
Of course, we agree with Hunter that the target should be a 100% clearance rate, but after a year when so much went wrong, it’s worth examining what went right.
The detective work in Dallas is worth highlighting because police here fared much better than other large departments that also struggled with increases in violent crime and complications from the pandemic. Chicago and Philadelphia had homicide clearance rates in the neighborhood of 50% in 2019. Those cities then saw those figures tumble even lower, by at least 6 percentage points as the end of 2020 neared, according to The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported that Los Angeles’ clearance rate fell from 80% to 55%.
We can look closer, to Houston, where the homicide clearance rate was 58%, according to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.
How did Dallas outperform these cities?
The Dallas Police Department closed 2018 with a respectable 73% homicide clearance rate. But the pace of slayings quickened in 2019, setting off alarm bells about homicide staffing levels. After a particularly bloody month, Dallas police leaders boosted the homicide unit, which went from 14 detectives to 22.
The unit was buttressed again in 2020, bringing the number of homicide detectives to 28. Hunter said he intentionally recruited more Spanish speakers to improve communication with Hispanic residents. He went from two Spanish-speaking detectives to six. Hunter himself is conversational in Spanish.
These were wise moves. Dallas police can generally send a squad of six detectives and a supervisor to each murder case, allowing police to thoroughly canvass a scene and to simultaneously interview people at multiple locations. Detectives do a follow-up canvass the next day.
This presence encourages community members to cooperate, Hunter said.
“When you show up and you treat people with respect and you show them that you’re committed to solving the crime, you get that feeling reciprocated. …That’s where we get the tips,” he told us.
The lieutenant said tips also flow from quickly uploaded police blog posts that invite people to contact the lead detective in the case. The blog posts are usually picked up by media outlets.
We commend the Dallas police homicide unit for doing its part to remove dangerous people from our neighborhoods and to ensure that they are punished for their crimes. Hunter told us he expects his unit will continue to succeed under incoming Chief Eddie Garcia, himself a former homicide detective. We share his optimism and urge the chief to keep investing in this unit’s great police work.
