Gun Violence

The families of people hurt during a mass shooting at the Super Bowl rally in Kansas City last February face what one expert calls "victimization debt."

The 16-year-old, known only as “A.M.” in court documents, claims self defense in the shootings that killed one woman and injured 24 other people. A Jackson County Family Court judge ruled that he will not be tried as an adult.

The police department has struggled to solve homicides, partly due to shoddy detective work, staffing shortages and eroding community trust.

Journalists at St. Louis Public Radio, APM Reports and The Marshall Project partnered on a 5-part investigation breaking down homicide clearance rates in St. Louis.

These St. Louis families have been waiting for years in hopes of getting answers after their loved ones were killed. While parents, siblings and others say police seem to have forgotten them — they have not.

The city’s homicide unit has dealt with short staffing, long hours and a ballooning DNA backlog.

Several officers in the homicide unit faced internal complaints that they slept on the job, failed to get key evidence and lied to superiors.

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.

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.

Getting and interpreting homicide clearance data involved litigation, complex analysis and patience.