Title
Calling on the United States Congress to pass the bipartisan Violent Incident Clearance and Technological Investigative Methods (VICTIM) Act which will give law enforcement the support they need to investigate violent crime and increase the closure rate of homicide cases.
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WHEREAS, U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), John Kennedy (R-LA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Thom Tillis (R-NC), as well as Representative Dwight Evans (PA-3) reintroduced the bipartisan Violent Incident Clearance and Technological Investigative Methods Act (VICTIM) Act, a bill to help improve the clearance rate for murders and violent gun crimes. The legislation would establish a grant program at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to provide funding to state, tribal, and local law enforcement agencies to hire, retain, and train detectives and victim services personnel to investigate unsolved homicides and support victims; and
WHEREAS, The national clearance rate for murders, or the percentage of murder cases solved by law enforcement agencies, has been in continual decline for decades and, in recent years, has reached its lowest point. Between 2019 and 2022, murder clearance rates fell from 61 percent in 2019 to 53 percent, marking an all-time low. This means that today, almost half of murders in the United States go unsolved, leaving families with no answers, closure, or justice; and
WHEREAS, Tragically, people of color disproportionately suffer from murders and poor clearance rates. Despite comprising 13.4 percent of the U.S. population, Black victims made up at least 54 percent of those murdered in 2022, and local and national reports show that cases involving Black and Hispanic victims go unsolved at substantially higher rates than those involving white victims; and
WHEREAS, In Philadelphia, there are over 2,000 unsolved murder cases, dating back to the 1970s. The majority of the case's victims are people of color. This issue causes not only pain and unanswered questions for famili...
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