Almost 30 Homicides & Five Cleared: Who Is To Blame? [KTCW]

Earlier this week WBLK personality Young Nok wrote an article about the homicide rate in Buffalo. I found it hard to believe out of the 30 homicides that have happened this year, one of them being his brother Jeremy Lamar, ONLY FIVE HAVE BEEN SOLVED. Out of those five that were solved, one was a murder/suicide and the other one was a father who killed his step son.

Those statistics alone are sad, who is to blame? Out of all of those statistics lets take a reasonable guess based on other statistics and say that the majority of these killings are black on black crime. With violence at an all time high, who is to blame for the crimes not being solved?

Yesterday me and DJ Big Rob were riding around the town and we saw two police officers sitting in their squad car playing SOLITAIRE!!! I could not believe in a town with a 21 percent homicide clearance rate you have officers parked playing solitaire on their work computer. Hopefully this was just the case of two negligent officers.

All of the blame can't be put on the police. One officer, told me a story about how everyone in a community knew who broke in an old woman's house, beat her up, but refused to give any information so they could arrest the suspect. That is ridiculous, everyone complains about crime but no one wants to do anything to assist in pursuing the criminals.

It is a two-sided issue that really needs to be addressed, people don't trust the police. They don't want to talk about crime in fear of retaliation. Another issue is some law enforcement harass and profile people who aren't even committing a crime. Why would those people want to help them when something serious is going on?

Who is to blame for the low homicide clearance rate in Buffalo? Is law enforcement to blame? How about the people in the community who tolerate lawless behavior? The police don't live in the communities they patrol and neither do the politicians. The whole situation is complex but the victim's families deserve justice. Check in with us on Know Thy Self Community Wednesday and let us know what your thoughts are on the subject.