Families of color are a lot less likely to get justice when a loved one is murdered.
A new report by Edwin Rios and Kai Wright for Mother Jones looks at the stunning disparities in murder clearance rates in minority communities. The report focuses on the story of Emill Smith in particular, whose murder has gone unsolved for years despite his family's pleas to local police:
Emill had been to a neighborhood bar, where a security camera recorded him dancing, hanging out by the pool table, and kissing an old friend on the forehead before leaving. As he got into his car, someone walked up and shot him several times. No one was ever arrested in connection with the crime, and odds are no one will be. That's because, while Chester has one of the nation's highest homicide rates, it has a far lower than average "clearance rate." Not even one-third of last year's 30 homicides have been solved, a rate less than half the national average. Since 2005, 144 killings have gone unsolved.
The effect has been excruciating on Emill's family, particularly his mother, Valerie:
When she recounts the years since her son's death, her voice still breaks. She left her job as a medical technician at Springfield Senior Commons to focus on taking care of her six other children and moved to a safer neighborhood. Her leopard-print robe covers the tattoos on her shoulders—one side bears Emill's initials, the other a pair of hands folded in prayer. Three portraits of Emill watch over the living room that Valerie tidies meticulously each day after dropping the now 11-year-old twins at the bus stop. When the twins recently asked to spend time at their cousin's house in the Bennett Homes, she warned them to not go outside. Later, one of the boys told her they'd seen someone get shot outside their cousin's window.
"This is me," Valerie sighs. "That's my life." This spring, on the seventh anniversary of her son's death, she went to his grave to lay down a fresh batch of flowers and just talk. It still feels like yesterday that Emill was alive and joking in her house. It feels like she's in a dream, waiting to be jolted awake. Twice a year, on Emill's birthday and on the day of his death, she calls the police department to ask for an update on the case. When she called in January, on what would've been his 29th birthday, she learned that the detective working the case had retired.
This is all too common in minority communities, where murders are much less likely to be solved. Nationwide, the clearance rate for homicides involving white victims was 78 percent, compared to 67 percent for those involving black or Hispanic victims, according to an analysis of 1980 to 2008 data by Scripps Howard News Service.
But in some cities, the disparities are even worse: in New York City, for example, 86 percent of homicides involving a white victim were solved, compared to 45 percent of those involving a black victim, according to an analysis of 2013 data by the New York Daily News. And David Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Mother Jones that in minority communities, clearance rates for murders and nonfatal shootings can get "pathetically low. They can easily fall down to single digits."
One possible explanation, Mother Jones found, is minority communities are a lot more likely to have bad relationships with police. That makes it less likely that people will come forward when a murder happens, which in turn makes it more difficult for police to quickly act on a killing. That's important: a study published in the National Institute of Justice Journal found that murders are a lot more likely to be solved when cops are faster at securing a scene, notifying homicide detectives, and identifying witnesses.
And failure to solve these cases can actually lead to more violence, making police's job harder. "People know what happened," Kennedy told Mother Jones. "So if the criminal-justice system isn't taking care of this, the likelihood that you'll get your friends and a gun and take care of this goes up."
Read Mother Jones's full report.