CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland's homicide unit is woefully understaffed, is equipped with outdated technology and and the selection process for who gets into the elite group of detectives is flawed, according to a report prepared by a Washington law enforcement think tank.

A cleveland.com reporter obtained a copy of the report this week, 14 months after the news organization requested it under open records law.

City officials have had the results for months and have adopted some of the recommendations its authors suggested. But comments by police brass at a recent City Council hearing indicate many of the problems remain.

As Cleveland's annual homicide totals have risen in recent years, the rate at which detectives solve them has fallen.

Mayor Frank Jackson deemed the department's low rate of solving homicides "unacceptable" in an August 2017 press conference held after a series of summer slayings.

His assessment was buoyed by the think tank's report, which is dated December 2016. It paints a bleak picture of a homicide unit plagued by a lack of detectives and resources.

The report from the Police Executive Research Forum notes that while Cleveland police homicide detectives are both talented and motivated, the unit needs better management and more bodies and more specific training.

The 91-page assessment says that, like most major urban centers, Cleveland's police department is dealing with a three-fold problem of dwindling resources, outdated technology and increasing homicide rates. The result is detectives taking on caseloads twice as high as recommended standards within the industry.

"The big picture is that this is a homicide unit that is significantly challenged," said Chuck Wexler, the group's executive director. "They are well-experienced and hard-working, but they need resources. If I had to say the number one factor is that this is a homicide unit that works hard, but they're case load is way too high."

The analysis covers city homicide cases from January to October 2015, and involved eight months of interviews with detectives, police brass and prosecutors. The study was conducted at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance. They are conducting similar reviews of homicide units across the country where homicide rates increased.

The report outlined 75 recommendations to Cleveland police that they believe will increase ability of the homicide unit to solve cases.

Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said that some of the recommendations have been adopted, others are in the process of being adopted and others are not feasible. Detailed questions sent to Ciaccia and city spokesman Dan Williams were not immediately answered.

More money, fewer detectives



A homicide detective should take on four to six new homicide cases per year, according to the study. Cleveland detectives are assigned an average of 10 cases per year. This means that investigators have less time to devote to individual cases, which means more homicides go unsolved.

For months, city officials have promised that help is on the way. With the passage of an income tax hike in 2016, the city was able to beef up its budget for police.

Police Chief Calvin Williams said during a safety committee meeting last week that the department budgeted for 23 detectives and supervisors for homicide for the 2018 fiscal year. There are currently 13 detectives and one supervisor.

Williams said during the presentation that adding more officers has been a struggle despite the added resources.

One of the main issues is attrition: 81 officers left the Cleveland Police Department in 2017. Another 23 left between the beginning of 2018 through March 21, according to information the city provided through a public records request.

There are currently 1,521 officers. The police department is budgeted for 1,610 officers and the administration eventually wants to build the force to 1,700. Staffing issues in the patrol and detectives units within the department's five police districts hinder the ability to fully staff homicide.

The report showed that as the number of homicide detectives has dropped, so has the rates homicides were solved.

In 2009, the city had 19 detectives, investigated 122 homicides and solved 77 percent of the cases. By 2015, the department had only 13 detectives, 128 homicides and solved only 56 percent of the cases, the report found.

The city has not provided clearance rates for the 2016 and 2017 despite repeated requests from cleveland.com. The city had 133 homicides in 2016 and another 130 in 2017. Those numbers represent some of the highest murder rates in the city in decades.

During his August 2017 speech, Jackson said homicide detectives had solved fewer than half of their cases through the first eight months of that year.

The next month, Williams announced the department partnered with the FBI, which now provides investigators and technical resources to help police solve new and cold-case homicides.

Crime doesn't sleep



The way that the way homicides are doled out among the detectives also contributes to the backlog.

Homicide detectives are staffed in two-detective teams. Four teams work a day shift from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the other two teams work second-shift. A monthly rotation of one team is on-call from midnight to 8 a.m., when the majority of homicides happen, the report says.

Of the 114 cases reviewed, 40 percent of the homicides happened during the overnight shift. The on-call detectives immediately absorbed those homicides into their caseload which meant they were given a disproportionate amount of cases.

PERF found that one team caught three homicide cases in five days. Another team got nine new cases in a month working the overnight shift, more cases than is recommended for an entire year.

That "means that detectives cannot thoroughly investigate any single case for a very long period," the report said. "When detectives have to stop investigating a current case to start investigating a new one, they can lose the opportunity to be proactive and quickly follow up on important investigative leads."

The on-call shift also causes delays in the detectives' ability to get to the crime scene. The report says detectives who arrive at the scene of homicides within 30 minutes have a significantly better chance of solving the case. That happened in only 15 percent of the cases reviewed by PERF.

Homicide detectives are also responsible for conducting other specialized investigations, including all child deaths, investigations into officers who use deadly force, suspicious deaths and special requests from the chief's office. Between 2013 and 2016, homicide detectives handled an additional 477 cases that weren't homicides.

PERF recommended that a district detective be included in those investigations to help ease the homicide detectives' burden, as well as giving a newer detectives more experience working death investigations.

Old-school tools don't cut it



The analysis also pointed to significant deficiencies in the technology that the homicide unit used in its investigations. The investigators at the scene of a homicide were unable to record witness statements, research police databases or access emails. PERF recommended giving homicide detectives mobile devices that link to Cleveland police databases.

The study also recommended giving detectives tools to analyze social media accounts, improve information sharing within the department, upgrade the unmarked cars they use and upgrade outdated and unreliable equipment used to conduct interviews of suspects and witnesses.

"The unit's current tools fail to meet the needs of a modern homicide investigation, thus limiting the detectives' ability to perform their jobs effectively and efficiently."

Since the report was issued, the police department has spent about $2 million to upgrade technology, as mandated by the consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice, with another $1 million in upgrades planned for 2018.

Selection process needs to change



Perhaps, the harshest criticism in the report came from an analysis of how officers are promoted into the homicide unit. There are currently two ways to make the squad: either the police chief chooses the detectives, or they're promoted through seniority, which is the preferred method of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, the union that represents rank-and-file officers.

The study found fault with both ways. Neither way requires new homicide detectives to have the requisite investigative experience.

The collective bargaining agreement that ran from 2013-2016 - and has been indefinitely extended because of protracted contract negotiations - gave the chief one pick for every seniority selection. A draft of the new contract, which has not yet been finalized, allows for the chief to make two selections for every seniority pick.

The report criticized the chief's selection process saying there is no formal criteria for vetting candidates. The report said the team was told that candidates with prior investigative experience are "preferred."

The special investigations commander, which includes homicide, along with the homicide lieutenant submit their three top choices to the chief. The chief makes the final call. The acting commander, Daniel Ross, was moved into the position in March after then-commander James McPike was demoted after an internal affairs investigation found 60 sex crimes went uninvestigated.

The union's method of selecting homicide detectives is a little different. The union leadership consults a list of officers who expressed interest in joining homicide. The candidate with the most seniority is automatically chosen, regardless of that officer's current post or prior experience investigating crimes.

The seniority picks also pose problems because the officers are typically at the end of their careers and retire within one or two years, the report says. That small window doesn't allow for investigators to gain adequate experience in homicide investigations and causes quick turnover rates.

"Choosing candidates based on seniority can also mean that younger detectives -- who many have more knowledge of things like technology, social media, and other tools critical to modern homicide investigations -- may have few opportunities to join the homicide unit," the report says.

Wexler said his team was impressed with the way the homicide unit was able to operate with the issues, along with investigating the most serious and complex cases in the city.

"It's amazing the work they do with the resources that they do have," he said.