ST. LOUIS — After police officers roll up the yellow tape and the flashing patrol cars pull away from a crime scene, the difficult slog of investigative work begins.
It may take months, or even years, to get the right tip or witness to close a case, and in the meantime the deaths — and families desperate for answers — keep piling up for ºüÀêÊÓƵ homicide detectives.
Those detectives, according to policing experts, should handle in the range of three to six homicide cases a year because of the complexity of investigations and importance to public safety in finding and charging a killer. But ºüÀêÊÓƵ detectives since 2016 have been assigned an average of nine to 13 cases a year, according to the police department.
The heavy caseloads are made worse by the kind of dramatic surge in violence that played out last year in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and other large cities. And with more homicides to investigate, there’s greater likelihood that some go unsolved.
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Maj. Shawn Dace, ºüÀêÊÓƵ police commander of the Bureau of Investigative Services, said 2020 in particular strained homicide detectives. ºüÀêÊÓƵ saw its highest homicide rate in the last 50 years with 262 killings. Even before that, the city by 2019 had the top homicide rate for large U.S. cities for five years running.
The surge in killings shows no signs of stopping. So far this year, homicides are up 44% compared with this time in 2020. Still, Dace said he thinks the department has done the best it can with the available staff.
“The detectives are working hard, but I wouldn’t say overworked,†Dace said. “Yes, we’re short officers throughout the department and our detectives are working long hours, but they are incredibly dedicated.â€
Leaders for the union, the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Police Officers Association, argue, however, that the staff shortages and climbing caseloads have become a threat to public safety.
“The critical understaffing of our police department is the most dangerous challenge facing this city,†SLPOA business manager Jeff Roorda said. “There’s nowhere that this insufficient staffing has more dire consequences than in the homicide unit. … The unmanageable burden of caseloads that are triple what most homicide investigators handle means that too many murderers go unidentified and unprosecuted.â€
The officer shortage has dogged ºüÀêÊÓƵ command staff for years. As of this week, the department was still 161 officers short of its authorized strength of 1,348.
And as the number of killings in the city mounts, the clearance rate for homicide cases has worsened, according to department records. The rate calculates the number of cases closed each year because of outcomes like an arrest, a suspect death or a ruling of justifiable killing, and compares that number with overall homicide cases. In ºüÀêÊÓƵ, the clearance rate fell from 58% in 2011 to 36% last year.
That puts ºüÀêÊÓƵ well below the average rate of 60% for large cities, according to the .
Conviction rates are typically even lower. In 2020, for example, charges were refused for 18 of the 82 closed cases police submitted to prosecutors.
Dace said he recognizes the city’s frustrations with the number of killings, but argues that major arrests have been made. He notes that caseloads are far from the only barrier to closing a case, and he says the lack of witness cooperation is a central problem.
“More than 200 killings for a city our size, everybody should be appalled,†Dace said. “It’s frustrating. It’s depressing. It’s scary. But we will keep trying to locate the people responsible, and we need the public to get with us.â€
‘It’s nonstop’
The homicide unit did get some help during a wave of violence last summer that police Chief John Hayden told the Post-Dispatch created an unprecedented workload.
In July alone, the city saw 53 homicides, a stretch Hayden said then was “more demanding than I’ve seen as a ºüÀêÊÓƵ police officer in 33½ years.â€
Hayden added six detectives and a sergeant to the homicide unit, bringing it to seven sergeants and 31 detectives by the end of 2020. But despite the boost in numbers, a detective still was responsible for investigating an average of 10 homicides.
Former and current department staff say that number doesn’t encompass their true workload. Detectives also carry all their unsolved cases from past years, assist on other homicide investigations and must testify in court and complete required paperwork and training. They may also be called to the scene of serious assaults and suspicious deaths not counted in their caseload.
Nine of the department’s homicide detectives and two sergeants also make up the Cold Case Unit, which was formed in 2019 and is tasked with meeting monthly and following up leads on older unsolved killings.
The caseloads can also be uneven based on what calls come in during a shift.
In ºüÀêÊÓƵ, the homicide unit is separated into squads that include a sergeant and about four detectives who work in partners. The lead investigator role is assigned based on a rotation within the squad during a particular shift.
Heather Taylor, a spokesperson for the Ethical Society of Police, an organization that advocates for diversity in law enforcement ranks in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area, retired in 2020 after about eight years as a sergeant in the homicide unit working the night shift.
Taylor, an outspoken critic of the department, said one of the detectives she managed was the initial lead investigator on 19 cases, while others in the unit took the lead on just around four cases. Homicides could be reassigned to balance the cases, but the work often remained uneven, she said.
“The workload it’s overwhelming, it’s nonstop. It’s unreal at times, when you get two or three homicides in a night,†Taylor said. “There's no question that they don’t have enough detectives for the number of homicides, but there’s also a mismanagement of staff.â€
Taylor said adding more staff to the unit isn’t simple.
â€You can’t just move someone from patrol to homicide. They need to be trained, they need to know how to do investigative work,†she said. “I remember I once waited six months before a new detective was ready to be transferred in, and in that time you’ve got 10 more homicides.â€
The issue of staff allocation was raised in an in-depth report on the ºüÀêÊÓƵ police force that was funded by several major ºüÀêÊÓƵ corporations and completed in December by Teneo, a London- and New York-based CEO consultant group.
“Department employees feel they lack the staffing and resources to address, investigate and prosecute violent crime and to engage in more proactive crime-fighting,†the consultants wrote.
The report suggested a departmentwide review of staff assignments and recommended a new department structure that included combining the homicide unit with the department’s serious assault unit to create more flexibility and collaboration on overlapping functions.
Department leaders did win a long-sought victory in September when the state Legislature passed a measure exempting ºüÀêÊÓƵ police officers and firefighters from requirements that they live in the city for at least their first seven years. Commanders hope the change will result in more recruits and help curb staffing shortages. For now, the exemption is set to expire in 2023 after ºüÀêÊÓƵ voters in November rejected a measure to modify the city charter permanently.
Hayden argued for the change before state lawmakers and said the residency requirement limited the department’s pool of candidates.
“We desperately need more officers and we need them now,†Hayden told the Legislature last year.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ County police detectives manage a lighter caseload than city police, with investigators typically handling six to eight homicides a year, according to the county department.
County police take over investigations in some towns with smaller departments, but of the 55 homicides within its jurisdiction last year, the unit had a clearance rate of 87%, according to county statistics.
Experts weigh in
Although there is limited research on the impact rising caseloads have on clearance rates, researchers have settled on recommendations that investigators take on no more than six cases in a year.
A surveyed 55 police departments that handled at least 25 homicides annually over five years.
The study found that departments that limited detective caseloads to five had an average clearance rate of 65.1%, compared with 59.7% for those with heavier caseloads.
The study’s author, former Baltimore police detective and FBI major case specialist Timothy Keel, notes that what researchers call solvability factors, like the participation of a witness or the location of a killing, are also a big factor in improved clearance rates. Keel recommends departments with at least 100 homicides a year, like ºüÀêÊÓƵ, limit their caseloads to no more than six.
A an even lower limit of just three cases per detective in a year.
The review by the department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance analyzed seven police departments with at least 24 homicides and exceptionally high clearance rates averaging above 80% from 2008 through 2010. The study found that one similarity in their success was lower caseloads for each detective.
The bureau’s report acknowledged it would be difficult given staff and budget constraints at many departments, but argued it was needed when “investigating the most serious criminal act to humankind†and would likely increase clearance rates along with morale.
Charles LoFaso, formerly a Rochester, New York, homicide detective and now a professor at Ohio State University, also found in
“I don’t know how you’d do it with 10 cases at once,†LoFaso said, recalling his own days as a detective. “A homicide investigation takes an enormous amount of time, and today it’s become much more technical so manpower is essential.â€
LoFaso said there are often tasks in a homicide investigation that need to be completed simultaneously, from following up on leads, to filing warrants and attending meetings with prosecutors and medical examiners.
“In the end, detectives are human,†LoFaso said. “And rising caseloads cause fatigue. If you’ve got too many cases, you’re going to get exhausted. Then that could just let more people get away with murder — more families who won’t see an arrest after a loved one lost their life.â€