Police solving fewer of Lexington’s murders. Why it’s an issue in the race for mayor.

Kwame El-Amin, a father of three and owner of a food truck, was one of five people shot at Douglass Park during the annual Dirt Bowl basketball game on a Sunday in September 2015.

Four days later, El-Amin died.

More than three years after his death, the murder remains unsolved despite pleas from police and El-Amin’s family for witnesses to come forward to help police catch the gunmen.

El-Amin’s death is one of a growing number of unsolved murder cases in Lexington over the past five years, according to a Herald-Leader analysis of Lexington Police Department records. The department’s clearance rate — the percentage of murder cases solved by arrest or closed for other reasons — has steadily declined since 2013, when all 19 murders that year were solved.

The department — which at one time was recognized by the U.S. Department of Justice for its high clearance rate — has not solved more than 80 percent of murders by the end of the calendar year since 2014.

The city’s growing rate of unsolved murders, which mirrors a national trend, has been a topic of debate in this fall’s mayoral election, which pits former Vice Mayor Linda Gorton against Ronnie Bastin, a former Lexington police chief and public safety commissioner.

Bastin was police chief from 2008 to 2014 before being named public safety commissioner, a position he held until January when he resigned to run for mayor. Bastin was chief when the department’s clearance rates were generally higher, but he also had overall responsibility for the city’s safety during the drop in clearance rates.

“My record from 2008-2014 shows that I know how to provide the support officers and detectives need to solve crimes at a high level,” Bastin said.

Linda Gorton, who was on the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council for 16 years, criticized Bastin during a debate Monday night for the city’s steadily rising number of murders. He dismissed the criticism, saying police rely on council members to adequately fund them.

If elected, Gorton said she would look at staffing levels in the police department to determine if detectives are being overworked.

“I would want to learn whether officers may be stretched too thin, asked to take on responsibilities beyond law enforcement, “Gorton said. “We always need to be cognizant of making sure we grow our police force appropriately in relation to population growth.”

Bastin said he would “support and suggest methods to strengthen the trust with the community, so that people feel safe and comfortable giving police the information they need to solve crimes.”

In 2007, the department’s clearance rate was 88 percent. A decade later, it was 73 percent after rebounding from a low of 63 percent in 2016.

Those numbers are well below the department’s average murder clearance rate of 90 percent since 1974, when the city and county merged governments.

Lt. Albert Johnson, who oversees the homicide and robbery unit, said there are multiple reasons why the number of solved murders has decreased. In 2017, 20 of the year’s 28 homicides occurred between July and December, giving detectives less time to investigate and make arrests before the end of the year, when the city reports its clearance rates.

Johnson said there will likely be arrests soon from three unsolved 2017 murders.

“We solved one from 2016 this year,” Johnson said. “Many of these cases take years to either solve or get them to court.”

The department’s clearance rates improve over time as more murders from prior years are solved. But the FBI tracks and reports end-of-year clearance rates, not adjusted clearance rates.

There also are instances where police have identified a suspect but they do not yet have enough evidence to charge someone.

“Or we are still waiting for witnesses to come forward to help us,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the department made changes last year that should give homicide detectives more time to solve murders.

“The pressure they put on themselves is immense — it’s too much sometimes,” Johnson said of the detectives in his unit.

Homicide detectives previously were called to all shootings — regardless of whether the victim died. The number of non-fatal shootings climbed to 103 in 2017, according to Lexington police data. That’s a 58 percent increase from the 68 non-fatal shootings in 2011.

Starting in early 2017, the department established a permanent violent crimes unit, which investigates non-fatal shootings and some robberies. The unit has been around in prior years but has morphed into an investigative unit, Johnson said.

Johnson also said he has hired two additional detectives and another detective is expected to be hired soon. The police department does not release the total number of officers assigned to particular units.

“We are hoping that the changes will mean a change in our case load,” Johnson said.

Leadership within the homicide unit has also been ever-changing in recent years.

Department records show that there have been four different lieutenants commanding the homicide and robbery unit since 2012. The lieutenant who previously oversaw homicide and robbery had served as either a sergeant or lieutenant in the unit for nearly a decade.

Johnson, though, dismissed turnover as a contributing factor to lower murder clearance rates.

“I don’t think turnover in my position effects it,” Johnson said. “I think turnover in the sergeant’s position would be more detrimental. “ The two sergeants in that unit have been there for several years , said Brenna Angel, the police department’s spokeswoman.

Some of the murders police considered solved in recent years also never resulted in guilty convictions.

At least four people who were charged with murder were later acquitted or found not guilty of murders from 2013, 2014 and 2015, but those cases remain closed on the department’s books.

The Herald-Leader could find no cases where someone charged with a homicide from 2007 to 2011 was later acquitted.

Still, the department’s murder clearance rate is better than most police departments across the country.

“Nationwide, the clearance rate is 59.4 percent, so we are still higher than the national average,” Angel said.

The national rate for solved murders is at its lowest since the FBI began to track and report it. The clearance rate for city’s with more than 200,000 people is closer to 52 percent.

Lexington police also still solve more murders than Louisville police. From 2008 to 2017, the clearance rate in Louisville was 60 percent. During that same time period, Lexington’s rate was 81.4 percent.