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

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.

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

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.

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.

APM Reports is suing the police department for withholding data about which homicide cases have been solved. The department told APM Reports and St. Louis Public Radio that information was a part of an investigative record.