Jennifer Lu
Data Reporter | APM ReportsJennifer Lu is a data reporter at APM Reports. Before that, she worked for the Los Angeles Times. She is a graduate of Brandeis University and holds a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri.
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The police department has struggled to solve homicides, partly due to shoddy detective work, staffing shortages and eroding community trust.
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The city’s homicide unit has dealt with short staffing, long hours and a ballooning DNA backlog.
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Several officers in the homicide unit faced internal complaints that they slept on the job, failed to get key evidence and lied to superiors.
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In the past decade, police solved fewer than half of the homicide cases with Black victims and two-thirds of the cases with white ones.
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Getting and interpreting homicide clearance data involved litigation, complex analysis and patience.
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In one of America’s deadliest cities, police have struggled to solve killings due to staffing shortages, shoddy detective work and lack of community trust.
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Newly released data reveals no resolution for families of more than 750 homicide victims. Police refused to release homicide clearance data, so we sued to find out.