APD told us today at a press conference downtown that their detectives solved 79 homicide cases last year and charged or identified a record 127 murder suspects.
Detectives solved 61 of the 89 homicide cases in 2024, which represents 69% of those cases – the highest percentage achieved by the department in recent years. Two additional cases from 2024 have been solved this month.
In addition, detectives in 2024 solved another 18 cases from previous years that had not yet been solved. The total of 79 solved cases means APD finished the year with an 89% solve rate.
According to their internal stats Albuquerque finished the year with 96 homicide victims. Our records research found 115 (9 of these homicides were ruled justified and 9 were officer involved shootings, also considered justified)
This is the third straight year that APD’s Homicide Unit has solved more than 60% of current-year cases, while solving dozens of previous-year cases.
“Our homicide unit and everyone in the department who supports these investigations continue to do outstanding work on behalf of victims and their families,” APD Chief Harold Medina said. “I am most proud of the fact that even with some turnover in personnel, our Investigations Division continues to thrive. That is a sign of culture change where we continue to strive to do better.”
Arrests are nice, but APD has had a history of arresting innocent people for murder. The real question for Medina is the conviction rate. What is the rate of convictions for his homicide unit? It seems to me I have read several times where suspects were acquitted or a hung jury. Why doesn’t Medina ever tell us the conviction rate?
Because that is a statistic that is tracked (or should be tracked) by the District Attorney’s office. Police Departments don’t care about convictions, only arrests.
Police departments and the public need to be concerned about convictions. You can arrest all you want, but if you fail to convict, then the crime is still unsolved and the offender is free. The DA tracts it, but not in a way that is directly back to the police department. It’s not hard, if APD wanted to do this they easily could.
Amazing that Albq has this high a homicide rate and Denver which is a larger population, has, from what I could find, a much lower rate and has had for years (90 in Albq and 60 in Denver). Keller and Medina have been manipulating stats for several years now to try and make them look better. APD is still understaffed and their response to crime is a failure, IMO.
You are correct W Carr. The numbers are not correct and manipulated. How it’s happening is they have been labeling the homicides under “ Incident “ or Agg Battery.