The trick to D.C. police force’s 94% closure rate for 2011 manslaughters

For the past two months, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier has touted the city's astronomically high manslaughter closure rate — 94 percent for 2011 — and warned anyone contemplating murder in the District to think twice.

"Your risk of being caught is pretty high if you commit a manslaughter in D.C.," Lanier told The Washington Post in December.

The closure rate she presents for the District is 154 percent higher than Boston's and at least 104 percent higher than Baltimore's, and it gives residents reason to believe that D.C. police have been remarkably successful at solving manslaughter cases under her watch.

But an examination of District manslaughters found that the department's closure rate is a statistical mishmash that makes things seem much better than they are. The District had 108 manslaughters last year, police records show. A 94 percent closure rate would mean that detectives solved 102 of them. But only 62 were solved as of year's end, for a true closure rate of 57 percent, according to records reviewed by The Post.

D.C. police achieved the high closure rate last year by including about 40 cases from other years that were closed in 2011.

The cases date from 1989, records show. The pattern was first reported by a local Web site, manslaughterwatch.org, in D ecember.

Lanier said the department followed FBI Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines in calculating its manslaughter clearance rate.

"The UCR guidelines have been used to report on clearance rates as long as anyone here can remember, and is not unique to my tenure as Chief of Police," Lanier said in a response to written questions. "Most agencies across the country use the same guidelines and rules in reporting manslaughter clearance rates."

Uniform Crime Reporting

Lanier referred a reporter to the FBI's Read More @ Source

JJ Abrams' Fox TV Series Alcatraz Trailer

Fox has finally released photos, a long-form plot synopsis and a trailer for the upcoming JJ Abrams-produced Elizabeth Sarnoff-written (Lost, Deadwood) television series Alcatraz. The "chilling new thriller centers on America's most infamous prison and one-time home to the nation's most notorious murderers, rapists, kidnappers and thieves." Find out what the show is about, see some photos, and even watch a two and a half minute trailer after the jump. Plot Synopsis: When San Francisco Police Department DET. REBECCA MADSEN (Sarah Jones, "Sons of Anarchy") is assigned to a grisly manslaughter case, a fingerprint leads her to a shocking suspect: JACK SYLVANE (guest star Jeffrey Pierce, "The Nine"), a former Alcatraz inmate who died decades ago. Given her family history -- both her grandfather and surrogate uncle, RAY ARCHER (Robert Forster, "Jackie Brown"), were guards at the prison -- Madsen's interest is immediately piqued, and once the enigmatic, knows-everything-but-tells-nothing government agent EMERSON HAUSER (Sam Neill, "Jurassic Park") tries to impede her investigation, she's doggedly committed. Madsen turns to Alcatraz expert and comic book enthusiast, DR. DIEGO "DOC" SOTO (Jorge Garcia, "Lost"), to piece together the inexplicable sequence of events. The twosome discovers that Sylvane is not only alive, but he's loose on the streets of San Francisco, leaving bodies in his wake. And strangely, he hasn't aged a day since he was in Alcatraz, when the prison was ruled by ...

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