Denver Police See Success Solving Nonfatal Shootings With New Unit
LAPPL News Watch
November 17, 2020
Last year, suspects who shot and wounded someone in Denver more than likely got away with it. At least 145 people were injured in shootings last year, though most of those cases were never solved by a department that had a 39% clearance rate for nonfatal shootings in 2019. But Denver police are seeing early success with a new solution to the low clearance rate for gun assaults.
Seven months in, the department's new Firearm Assault Team has solved 56 of its first 86 cases, giving the team a 65% clearance rate.
"I was hoping for some modest improvement, I just didn't expect it to be as effective as it's shown so far," Denver police Chief Paul Pazen said.
Pazen launched what's known as the FAST team in February after another year of elevated violence in the city. The idea is simple: Create a unit in the department's Major Crimes Division dedicated specifically to solving nonfatal shootings and handle those investigations as if they were homicides.
Previously, most of the
city's nonfatal shootings were investigated by detectives stationed at
each of the department's seven police districts.
1 comment:
Sounds like somebody came up with a decent idea and implemented it to see if it worked. It did. Problem solving is a good thing.
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