When someone is shot and killed, the likelihood that their case will be solved changes based on who and where they are. It’s a complicated aspect of gun violence in America — and just looking at the national numbers doesn’t correctly contextualize the problem. The FBI estimates that police departments solve 57.8 percent of homicides, but if one were to look closer at the numbers in Black communities across the country, the percentages drop dramatically.
When I began covering gun violence in 2018, one of the first stories I tried to pitch in a role I held before joining The Trace was about an unsolved homicide that happened where I grew up in Brooklyn. People on the block said they knew who did it. Some of them even told the police about it, but the shooter was never arrested. Because there wasn’t a national angle, my editors didn’t see the value of the story. Even when I provided more reporting on the prevalence of unsolved killings in the Black community, it still wasn’t enough to get it greenlit.
As The Trace’s new Great Lakes reporter, I recently picked up another version of that story, this time from Peoria, Illinois, where 88 percent of all gunshot homicide victims in the past five years have been Black. Police there solve around 50 percent of homicides, which is on par with national clearance rates, but in a city of Peoria’s size, 25 gun homicides a year can feel like much more, especially when the violence is intimate.
“Out of 25 homicides in a year, there’s no way we shouldn’t have three-quarters of that solved,” Terry Burnside, a local activist, told me during my reporting.
Residents speaking up, and the police gathering enough evidence, are crucial aspects of solving gun homicide cases. The power to prosecute a suspect, though, rests with a state or district attorney who has to consider both the evidence and the extent of the law. It’s not uncommon for police and prosecutors to disagree on when to proceed with a case, but that tension is pouring into the open in Peoria, where residents, local leaders, and victims’ families say State’s Attorney Jodi Hoos is not taking on enough homicide cases. And she’s not communicating with surviving families about why. (During my reporting, the State’s Attorney’s Office did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.)
My piece explores how an elected official’s inaction against gun violence can sow tension and doubt throughout a small city — where gun violence is a heavy burden that some neighborhoods find themselves carrying alone.
— Josiah Bates, Great Lakes reporter
From The Trace
In Peoria, Illinois, Community Members Want Prosecutors to Solve More Gun Homicides: The vast majority of shooting victims are Black. Surviving families and local activists say the state’s attorney isn’t taking on enough cases.
It’s One of Philly’s Hardest Hit Neighborhoods, But a Plan to Fight Gun Violence Is Showing Promise: Once a thriving working class community, Kensington has become infamous for drug use and violence. Now, after a year of intervention, homicides and shootings have dropped.
Several Law Enforcement Agencies Have Stopped Reselling Guns: The shift comes after an investigation by The Trace, CBS News, and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting linked former police guns to crimes.
What We’re Reading
Gary’s Historic Fight Against Gunmakers Faces New Challenge: The case, first filed in 1999, is set to go before the Indiana Court of Appeals later this year. [Capital B Gary]
Mississippi’s No-Knock Raids Have Led to Death and Injury. Dozens of Warrants Lacked Clear Justification: Some local courts have backed off approving no-knocks, but there are still no statewide limits on these dangerous types of raids. [The Marshall Project]
Alabama bans devices converting pistols to machine guns: Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed a ban on “Glock switches” and other devices that turn rifles and pistols into machine guns. [The Guardian]
The rise and fall of the Young Bag Chasers: They started as kids from West Philly just trying to make it out. Then a string of shootings and a precarious rise to fame as drill rappers altered the trajectory of their lives. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
White House removes advisory defining gun violence as a public health issue: The Trump administration has removed former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s advisory on gun violence as a public health issue from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ website. Murthy issued the advisory to make it clear that gun violence is “a public health issue that we should address the way we’ve addressed other public health issues in the past,” he told The Trace last summer. [The Guardian]
Judges Fear for Their Safety Amid a Wave of Threats: Federal judges are worried that online threats against those who oversee high-profile cases challenging Trump administration policies may lead to real-world violence. [The New York Times]
Trump once hailed WWII vet Medgar Evers as a ‘great American hero.’ Now the U.S. Army has erased him from a section on the Arlington National Cemetery website: The U.S. Army purged the section that had lauded the late Army sergeant and civil rights leader, who was assassinated by a white supremacist in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. The decision to erase Evers came after an executive order by Trump to eliminate all diversity, equality, and inclusion programs. [Mississippi Today]
The redeem team: Collectively, they spent 155 years in prison. Now they counsel other people facing their own long sentences. A conversation with five “peer advocates” at the New Orleans Public Defender’s Office. [The Watch]
In Memoriam
Derbing Alvarado, 15, was “everybody’s favorite sophomore” at his Oakland, California, college prep school, a friend told the San Francisco Chronicle — he was an athlete, an excellent student, and someone who refused to tolerate bullying. Derbing was shot and killed this week in an apparent attempted robbery while he and his friends walked to soccer practice. He loved soccer, and loved cheering on his favorite team, Real Madrid. He had a skill for making people laugh and big goals for his future, school staffers said, plans for college and a career. He wanted to support his family, the way they had supported him; his parents didn’t have a lot of money, and they worked hard to make sure Derbing and his sister could get a good education. He wanted to make them proud.
Spotlight on Solutions
With Donald Trump back in the White House and a Republican-controlled Congress, many gun reform advocates are (understandably) concerned that the country’s progress on firearm safety policy will stall out, or reverse course. But for Guns Down America, action on the federal level doesn’t have to be the focus.
Long one of the more unorthodox of the gun reform organizations, Guns Down America is focused on the business of guns, engaging in pressure campaigns targeting the firearms industry. For the latest edition of The Trajectory, Hudson Munoz, the group’s executive director, spoke with The Trace’s Chip Brownlee about its next move: developing a strategy to contribute to “community power,” and disrupt the social and economic dynamics that drive up demand for guns in the first place. “When communities are strong,” Munoz told Brownlee, “when people are not afraid or worried about eviction, when they have economic security, when they have opportunity and education — those things create connection in places, and they mitigate the risk of firearm injury and death.”
The Trajectory is a newsletter exploring the people, policies, and programs grappling with America’s gun violence crisis. Sign up here to get it delivered straight to your inbox.
Pull Quote
“Some people say ‘you don’t even really know your son. You don’t know what he was doing. Well, maybe not, but I know for a fact that whoever did that didn’t have the right to take his life.”
— Rachael Parker, a public servant in Peoria, Illinois, who lost her son to a shooting, on how gun homicides like her son’s go unsolved in the city, to The Trace
