In the Past Decade, Nearly 26,000 Murders Have Gone Without an Arrest in Major American Cities. Of Those, More Than 18,600 of the Victims — Almost Three‑Quarters — were Black.

Mary Franklin stands in front of Boston police headquarters holding a large portrait of her late husband, Melvin Franklin, who was killed in 1996. His murder is unsolved. (Yoon S. Byun for The Washington Post)

In the Past Decade, Nearly 26,000 Murders Have Gone Without an Arrest in Major American Cities. Of Those, More Than 18,600 of the Victims — Almost Three‑Quarters — were Black.

An Unequal Justice: Killings of Black People Lead to Arrests Less Often

In major U.S. cities, black victims were the least likely of any racial group to have their killings result in an arrest, according to a Post analysis of about 55,000 homicides. 

• By Wesley Lowery, Kimbriell Kelly and Steven Rich

Activist Eileen Paterson, center, the Rev. Gary Adams, left of center, and Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans, second from left, participate in a neighborhood peace walk on July 16. (Yoon S. Byun for The Washington Post)

Black victims, who accounted for the majority of homicides, were the least likely of any racial group to have their killings result in an arrest, The Post found. While police arrested someone in 63 percent of the killings of white victims, they did so in just 47 percent of those with black victims.

The failure to solve black homicides fuels a vicious cycle: It deepens distrust of police among black residents, making them less likely to cooperate in investigations, leading to fewer arrests. As a result, criminals are emboldened and residents’ fears are compounded.

In almost every city surveyed, arrests were made in killings of black victims at lower rates than homicides involving white victims.

Four cities — Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and Philadelphia — accounted for more than 7,300 of the black murders with no arrests.

In interviews with The Post, more than two dozen police chiefs and homicide commanders said they work just as hard to solve black murders but that those investigations are often hampered by reluctant witnesses.

No major U.S. city had a wider gap in arrest rates for white and black victims than Boston, where the killings of white residents are solved at twice the rate of black victims.

Police in several cities said that some types of killings are easier to solve than others. Domestic-violence cases and bar fights may present fewer hurdles to making an arrest, while gang-related shootings and drug-related killings, which are believed to account for the majority of unsolved cases, are more complicated, police said.

But residents and community leaders in many cities remain skeptical that police are doing all they can to solve black homicides.

“Black life is seen as not as important,” said the Rev. William Barber, a national civil rights leader, who called the failure by police to solve black homicides a civil rights crisis on par with questionable police shootings of minorities and wrongful convictions of black men.

“The black community gets cut by both edges of the sword,” said Barber, who until last year led the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP. “There’s no big rush to solve a case when it’s considered ‘black on black.’ But if it is a black-on-white killing, then everything is done to make an arrest.”

WASHINGTON POST