It’s like war numbers’: Cleveland endures worst homicide rate in recent history in 2020
Updated Jan 01, 2021; Posted Jan 01, 2021
Cleveland's homicide rate in 2020 the worst in recent history, including (clockwise from top left) Arthur Keith, Desmond Franklin, Anthony Hughes Jr., Erik Hakizimana and Dalion Mendoza.
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Adam Ferrise, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A weak economy, high unemployment rates, failing schools, and high child poverty levels all plagued Cleveland in 1982. Those same issues remain in 2020, laid barer by the coronavirus pandemic that limited access to social services and increased social isolation that devastated people’s mental health.
The two years are linked because they represent the worst two years in recent history for deadly violence in Cleveland. The city hit 185 homicides on Dec. 20, the most in a single year since 1982 when the city hit 195 homicides and when nearly 200,000 more people called the city home.
The homicide rate in 1982 ended at 33.9 homicides per 100,000 residents; this year, as of Dec. 20, it was 48.6 homicides per 100,000 residents. In Cleveland’s deadliest year -- 1972, when there were 333 homicides -- the homicide rate was 44.3 per capita.
Cleveland City Councilman Michael Polensek, who was first elected councilman in 1978, said the numbers bear out what he’s heard from residents all year: that the level of violence in 2020 escalated to historic levels.
“Seeing those numbers, that’s when you start to realize the significance of this,” Polensek said. “We all know the devastating effects on families. But you look at the sheer number of people shot. It’s like war numbers. The level of violence should send a shockwave through City Hall and the business community. What we’re going through is serious. It’s deadly serious.”
The number of people killed this year also represents a sharp increase over the 133 homicides in 2019.
The spike in killings puzzled city leaders and experts alike. Cleveland police attributed the spike in deaths to increased gang violence, drug activity and the coronavirus pandemic. Experts say the pandemic’s effect intensified already existing issues in the poorest big city in America.
Dan Flannery, director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research Education at Case Western Reserve University, said a struggling economy, social isolation, the proliferation of guns on the street, increased drug use and domestic violence during the pandemic all factored in the violent crime rate.
Many social services, including violence intervention, were sharply curtailed or dropped altogether because of the virus, Flannery said.
“You put all those things together and it’s a bad recipe for hoping things stay calm,” Flannery said. “I wish it were a simple answer and a straight-forward thing that if we did A, B and C, it would cut the homicides in half, but it’s not. There’s a lot of stress and anger and despair out there.”
Flannery also said more people are getting into disputes, and more are turning to violence. He also said more of the victims this year in Cleveland tended to be innocent bystanders or people who were not the gunfire’s intended target.
Polensek said he agreed.
“It was the perfect storm for criminals in this town,” Polensek said. “They don’t believe they’re going to get arrested, and if they do, they believe they’re going to be released from jail. The police are more reluctant than ever before to engage them. You have gang-bangers going at it, more retribution, more drugs, more turf wars and more guns than ever before. It’s easier to get a gun than a car.”
According to Cleveland police statistics, of the homicides recorded as of Dec. 20, 87 percent of the victims were Black.
Four people over age 70 were killed, and 11 children under age 18, including a
16-year-old boy killed during a carjacking and a
15-year-old boy walking home from a community meeting.
The number also includes the fatal shooting of undercover Cleveland police
Det. James Skernivitz, who was shot to death along with a police informant during a drug investigation, and two people killed by police officers --
Desmond Franklin by Cleveland police officer Jose Garcia and
Arthur Keith by Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority officer James Griffiths.
The number of homicides can fluctuate if the medical examiner rules a case a homicide that had no apparent signs of trauma when police began an investigation, or if police initially believed that a death was the result of foul play, but the medical examiner later ruled the death was from another cause.
Cleveland police also report fewer homicides than the medical examiner; the police number typically does not include police-involved shootings or justifiable homicides, among other types of cases.
The spike in deadly violence is not confined just to Cleveland. Cities across the country and Ohio have reported historic or near-historic homicides.
New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, among others, have seen a spike in homicides. In Ohio, Columbus surpassed an all-time high and registered its 163rd homicide on Dec. 16. Cincinnati surpassed its record on Dec. 13 with its 89th homicide of the year. As of Dec. 10, Toledo had 58 homicides, two shy of its record set in 1980.
Akron surpassed its worst year in at least a decade and had
50 homicides for the year. The city had 33 in 2019.
Some Cleveland suburbs also had a spike in killings. East Cleveland recorded 17 homicides, compared with six in 2019. Euclid and Cleveland Heights also surpassed 2019 homicide totals this year.
Unsolved cases
As Cleveland averaged about one homicide every two days in 2020, an understaffed homicide unit struggled to keep up. As of Dec. 14, Cleveland’s homicide detectives had solved 45 percent of the slayings in 2020, down significantly from 2019, when detectives ended the year with two out of every three cases solved.
If the solve-rate remains at 45 percent, it will mark the worst year for solving homicides in Cleveland in at least two decades.
The percentage of cases solved could increase as detectives continue to investigate 2020 cases into 2021. Several 2019 cases remained unsolved until this year, bringing the solve rate for that year to 72 percent, according to Cleveland police statistics.
According to the FBI’s annual crime statistics, the national average for solving homicides in 2019 was 61.9 percent.
Two different outside experts, one in 2016 and one in 2020, asked to help Cleveland’s homicide unit become more effective and efficient said Cleveland needs drastically more resources and detectives to solve cases. The city has 18 detectives, with two expected to retire at the end of the year.
The most recent analysis from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Safety Partnership program called for 38 homicide detectives in the unit to give investigators sufficient time to probe each case. Homicide detectives should investigate between three and six cases per year, but in Cleveland, each detective routinely gets assigned more than 10 homicides each year, the analysis found.
They also pointed to potential burnout among homicide detectives working at that pace.
Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said during a Dec. 16 City Council Safety Committee meeting that the city budget calls for 23 homicide detectives, but that he plans to increase the number to 25 sometime soon. Williams also said the department gets help from a Cuyahoga County Sheriff detectives, an agent from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and two FBI agents assigned to the homicide unit.
Shootings
Non-fatal shootings also rose sharply in 2020, according to city statistics. Through Dec. 14, police logged 1,385 shootings, including incidents where no one was hurt by gunfire, an increase of 60 percent over 2019.
All five police districts showed increases of more than 48 percent, including an 82 percent increase in the Third District, which encompasses downtown and parts of the Hough, Central and University neighborhoods on the East Side. Both West Side districts showed increases of 59 and 62 percent.
“People are shooting and they don’t care who they hit,” Polensek said. “They get into an argument and right away the guns come out.”
Gun seizures by police also increased in 2020. Police seized 2,314 guns through Dec. 14, up 24 percent over last year.
Arrests, however, plummeted in 2020. Police as of Oct. 28 made more than 5,000 fewer arrests than through the same time in 2019. The city has not yet released more recent data on the number of arrests, nor for what crimes.
Williams, during the Dec. 16 council hearing and under questioning by Councilman Brian Kazy, acknowledged low morale in the department.
“Morale is low throughout the department this year. It’s low across the city, for a ton of different reasons,” Williams said during the hearing.
