According to local media, Philadelphia Police launched today a website to help find suspects in unsolved murders, cases that make up the bulk of Philadelphia’s homicides.
The situation of impunity in the city of Brotherly Love is so serious that the Police Department has launched a website to help gather leads on unsolved murder cases.
According to information released at a news conference, Deputy Police Commissioner, Dennis Wilson, said that “these tips can be 100 percent anonymous.”
PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com will allow informants to provide written details, photos, videos, audio recordings or documents to help in the search for suspected killers, authorities said.
In her debut as Philadelphia Police Commissioner replacing Richard Ross, “disciplined” Christine M. Coulter said she hoped the site would give victims’ families closure and send them the message to the families that their loved ones have not been forgotten.
About the event, Homicide Capt. Jason Smith assured that “every homicide victim deserves justice”, and put all his faith in the online device, which he praised at the press conference with the victims’ families.
The numbers say that as of Wednesday, 216 homicides had been reported in the city this year – a 5% increase from 206 homicides at the same point last year, and a 7% increase from 201 homicides in the same period in 2017, according to police statistics.
In terms of year-end totals, homicides in the city reached a high in 2007, the last year with available data on the police website.
For all of 2007, the city recorded 391 homicides. That number decreased in 2008 to 331, but the number has been increasing since 2013, when 246 people were murdered. Last year, 353 people were slain in the city, compared with 315 for 2017 and 277 in 2016.
Translated by: José Espinoza
Noticias Newswire
