Baltimore Police report higher clearance rates, cite declines in homicides and shootings

Baltimore City Council Public Safety Committee Chair Mark Conway convened a briefing on citywide crime metrics and investigative outcomes, during which Baltimore Police Department officials said clearance rates have risen and several categories of violent crime declined compared with the prior year.

Deputy Commissioner, Baltimore Police Department, told the committee, “So starting with our clearance rates, we continue to see increases in our increases in reference to homicides and shootings, compared, you know, comparing this year to last year. We're seeing the necessary trends. We're acknowledging, of course, ongoing crime challenges, but we're meeting those challenges based on this clearance rate.” The department later reported a 73.9 percent clearance-rate figure for the year to date.

The department attributed the improvements to changes in investigative structure, added training and technology, and targeted enforcement. Lieutenant Colonel Hohman Herzog, citywide investigations, said reorganizing parts of Criminal Investigation Division gave units single oversight and allowed detectives to focus: “It allowed us to kind of focus on some of the small things with the investigations with burglaries, fingerprints, robberies, carjackings, and really drill down.” He also credited improved access to databases and evidence-processing resources.

Lisa Reynolds, chief of youth and community partnerships for the Baltimore Police Department, described a procedural change that affects juvenile cases: “What we're doing right now is centralizing all the cases and referrals through our juvenile booking. ... All felonies as well are being brought to juvenile booking, so we're identifying the district at that point.” She said the change reduced the number of juvenile cases without an assigned district in the department’s reports.

Officials provided specific year-to-date counts and comparisons. The department reported 24 homicides this year versus 34 in the prior year (a 29.4 percent decline) and 48 shootings compared with 77 in the previous year (a 37.7 percent decline). Gun-recovery figures rose to 544 seizures from 504 the prior year; “ghost gun” recoveries declined from 72 to 63. The department also reported 227 felony drug arrests year to date. Those figures were presented to the committee as of the department’s current report.

Council members asked for consistent, citywide metrics in future briefings so the council and the public can track trends. Conway and other council members praised detectives and department leadership for the progress while noting clearance rates can change as new cases are opened during the year. The deputy commissioner and lieutenant colonels said weekly CompStat review and district-level oversight remain central to sustaining the improvements.

The committee hearing moved from the metrics briefing to a separate discussion of open-air drug markets; police officials and council members said they will continue regular oversight of department metrics and reporting.