Friday, April 9, 2004 | 11:03 a.m.
Metro Police solved homicides at a lower rate than the national average last year, according to a Metro report released Thursday.
The report shows Metro investigated slightly more homicides in 2003 than 2002 and solved 52 percent of them. The national average was 64 percent for police departments, such as Metro, with jurisdictions with populations of more than 1 million.
A lack of cooperating witnesses was one of the factors that kept Metro's homicide clearance rate from being higher last year, according to the report's author, Lt. Tom Monahan, the man in charge of Metro's homicide section.
One of the most important factors in solving homicides is witness accounts, and without them, an investigation can reach a dead end, he said.
For example, four people were gunned down in 2003 in front of hundreds of onlookers at nightclubs but no one came forward to Metro Police to identify the suspects, according to the department's annual report on homicides.
"I'm not making an excuse. I'm not satisfied with the 52 percent rate," Monahan said. "Am I working diligently to improve? You better believe it."
Metro detectives investigated 141 criminal homicides in 2003 compared with 138 in 2002. Seven homicides in 2003 and six the year before were non-criminal officer-involved shootings.
The single biggest reason that people are murdered in Las Vegas is drugs, the report says. At least one in five killings last year, or 21 percent, can be traced to drugs.
In North Las Vegas, police had one homicide less than the year before -- 21 occurred compared with 22 in 2002. Henderson handled 10 homicides in 2003, four more than the year before.
For every 100,000 residents, there were 12 slayings in Metro's jurisdiction last year, compared with the national average of six. But Las Vegas' homicide rate is slightly lower when compared to other major cities.
U.S. cities with populations of 1 million or more averaged just over 14 homicides per 100,000 residents between 1999 and 2002 while Las Vegas averaged 12.
The highest concentration of homicides in Las Vegas last year was in an area generally bordered by Carey Avenue, Commerce Street, Martin Luther King Boulevard and Vegas Drive, a section of Las Vegas surrounded on three sides by North Las Vegas.
Nine homicides occurred last year in that small, gang-plagued area, covered by Metro's Bolden Area Command.
The Bolden area and downtown had a disproportionate percentage of homicides relative to the population.
While nine percent of Las Vegas residents live in the Bolden area, 18 percent of the city's homicides occurred there. Similarly, five percent of the city's residents live downtown by 17 percent happened in that area.
The lowest number of homicides occurred in northwest Las Vegas, where 23 percent of Las Vegas residents live. Seven percent of last year's homicides occurred there.
In 45 percent of last year's homicides, the killer was a friend or relative of the victim, the report says. Fifteen percent were domestic violence-related.
In 2003, only one victim, 32-year-old Cynthia Coronado, had obtained a court order against her killer. Her estranged husband was arrested for her murder.
This is a sharp decrease from 2002, when 43 percent of the homicide victims had protective orders.
"It's entirely possible that it's an indicator that the protective order system is working," Monahan said.
Gang affiliation was the motivating factor in seven percent of the homicides last year, compared with nine percent in 2002.
The ages of most homicide victims in 2001 and 2002 were between the ages of 18 and 24, but last year most of the victims were 25 to 34 years old.
Monahan noted that "a slight but noticeable trend" is the increase in victims aged 65 and older. There were six homicide victims in that age range in 2002 and eight in 2003.
The case of 70-year-old Henry Seeman, who was killed in October in his Spanish Trail home, is one of the unsolved cases from last year.
Monahan said the number of victims aged 65 or older has been rising in small increments for the past five years, possibly because the number of retirees moving to Las Vegas has been on the upswing, Monahan said.
Seventy-four of Metro's 141 slayings in 2003 were solved, or "cleared" with an arrest of a suspect, the issuing of an arrest warrant of the death of a suspect.
The national clearance rate for homicides is about 69 percent, but it falls to about 64 percent in cities with 1 million residents or more.
Metro's homicide solve rate between 1996 and 2003 has averaged about 54 percent, the report shows.
A 1999 study by the Washington, D.C.- based Justice and Research Statistics Association showed police departments that employ certain tactics when investigating homicides are more likely to solve them.
For example, the study revealed that homicides are more likely to be solved if homicide detectives are on call around the clock and respond to the scene within 30 minutes; if three or four detectives are sent to a scene; if patrol officers protected the scene before detectives arrived.
Metro employs all the practices mentioned in the study, Monahan said.
When the time interval between when the victim was last seen and when the body was recovered is greater than 24 hours, the case is less likely to be solved.
Of the 67 unsolved cases, 11 of the bodies were decomposing when discovered. Ten of the unsolved slayings were "body dumps," cases in which victims had been transported from the scene of the killing and deposited in a different area.
A case is less likely to be solved when the victim's identity can't be determined because of decomposition or mutilation.
There were nine homicides last year that occurred in front of other people, but no one came forward with information.
In two notable cases, Monahan said, four young men were shot to death at busy nightclubs but police found no witnesses.
"It frustrates the detectives because we are working hard for the families to solve these cases," Monahan said.
"Everyone has a conscience," he said. "It's up to them if they want to listen to it."
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