Shooting Case Clearance in Rochester, NY Working Paper 2018-07
Primary tabs
Introduction
On average, there are nearly 13,000 firearm homicides within the United States every year (everytownresearch.org). Evidence suggests that the number of shootings which result in a non-lethal injury is exponentially higher. Arrest rates for shooting incidents tend to be low as well; in Chicago, five percent of aggravated assault shootings that occurred in 2016 resulted in an arrest (The Economist Group Limited, 2017) and in Boston from 2014 to September 20, 2016, 15 percent of homicide shootings and less than four percent of aggravated assault shootings resulted in an arrest (Bernstein, 2017).In general, information on gun violence tends to be difficult to find, as the FBI does not disaggregate incidents based on the type of weapon used or the manner in which a case is cleared. This presents a serious obstacle to addressing gun violence, as it not only prevents the public from being able to understand the extent to which shootings affect a community, but it also places the responsibility for confronting the issue entirely upon the shoulders of law enforcement agencies. Recently, the Rochester Police Department launched its Open Data Portal to be available to the public, which includes case level information that can be used to identify shooting incidents as well as whether they resulted in an arrest. The objective of this paper is to explore clearance rates for shooting cases in Rochester, NY. Toward that end, we will examine conceptual differences between types of clearance, the number of local fatal and non-fatal shooting incidents over the past seven years based on publically available data, as well the proportion of these incidents that resulted in an arrest.
READ THE FULL PAPER HERE:
