A look at "Cold Case Squads"

mysteriew

A diamond in process
Joined
Jul 22, 2004
Messages
23,811
Reaction score
780
But the Indianapolis police, and other departments across the country, are scaling back the cold-case squads that would try to crack old crimes. Tighter budgets have forced cost-cutting, and Marion County's two major police agencies are down to two detectives assigned primarily to old cases.

"We would like to see a cold case squad, " said Lt. Brian Moore, a supervisor over IPD's homicide branch. Yet the more pressing goal, he said, is that "you've got to protect people from crime today. That's the No. 1 priority."

New York City's cold-case squad, now about 25 officers strong, is working without a commander. Boston's unit was folded into another squad and given additional duties, said Stacy Horn, author of "The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad."

The Louisville, Ky., Metro Police Department has two investigators for cold cases. St. Louis is starting up a cold-case squad for a year of work with money from a federal grant. But in Cincinnati, there is no separate unit.

The Marion County Sheriff's Department has one detective assigned to investigate cold cases. IPD has two, but supervising detective Sgt. Roger Spurgeon has additional duties and rarely looks into unsolved cases. His colleague, Detective R.C. Green, is expected to retire in February. Officials say they do not know whether he will be replaced.

The Indiana State Police have two full-time investigators working cold cases, said 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten, a department spokesman.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050815/NEWS01/508150439/1006/NEWS01
 
That has been point. If LE absolutely cannot spend time on it, they should turn it over to people who can spend the time.
I am not knocking the LE. They do a great job, and they have spent a lot of time on these cases. But their priority is and always has been on the current cases. The only have a limited number of people and a limited number of manhours that can be spent on cold cases. Many ameutur sleuthers can and do make progress in many of them, when they have access to the info. (Look what happened when DOE network went online- LE was often reluctant to give them info at first, till they started seeing sucesses).
 

Members online

Online statistics

Members online
184
Guests online
2,059
Total visitors
2,243

Forum statistics

Threads
589,952
Messages
17,928,128
Members
228,014
Latest member
Back2theGardenAgain
Back
Top