Police records obtained through a public information request show that the Boston Police Department arrested “fewer than 4 percent of gunmen involved in non-fatal shootings” that occurred between the start of 2014 and September 20, 2016.
Over 96 percent of the gunmen involved in non-fatal shootings were never apprehended.
According to Boston Magazine
[This] means, for instance, that detectives have not arrested anyone for shooting 14-year-old Keira Harrison three times as she watched Fourth of July fireworks on Bower Street this past summer. And police have not captured whoever shot a 15-year-old in South Boston in August, or the person who shot a seven-year-old on Bowdoin Street. In fact, the data revealed that police had not made a single arrest in any of the 19 non-fatal shootings of Boston minors under age 17.
The Magazine reports that BPD and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office suggest the low arrest rate is tied to the difficulty that attends non-fatal shootings. They say such “shootings are tough cases to solve…[and] usually occurring outdoors, where it’s difficult to locate physical evidence.” Moreover, they say “witnesses generally refuse to cooperate and help identify shooters,” which only puts investigators at another disadvantage.
Here is a problem–the arrest rate for fatal shootings is not much better. In fact, the arrest rate for gunmen involved in fatal shootings “is barely 15 percent.” So 85 percent of people who murdered someone with a gun in Boston January 2014 through September 20, 2016, were not apprehended.
If you total the figures–drawing an arrest rate from fatal and non-fatal shootings combined–the result is shocking:
Out of 618 cases involving shooting victims, 92 were classified as homicides; of those, 14 had been cleared by arrest. The other 526 people who were shot survived; of those, only 20 cases had led to an arrest. The total arrest rate had declined from 8 percent in 2014 to 6 percent in 2015 to barely above one percent in the still-active 2016 calendar year.
The Magazine aptly reports, “Boston is a shooter’s paradise.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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