Almost four years after her son’s shooting death at a Columbus gas station, Brenda Johnson still doesn’t know who would want to kill him and worries that his killers could be taking more lives.
Her son’s case is one of many unsolved violent crimes in Columbus. A recent analysis of unsolved crimes around the U.S. found that in 2022, 63% of violent crimes reported to law enforcement went unsolved.
Researchers with the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank based in Lexington, Kentucky, analyzed data from the FBI’s Uniformed Crime Reporting program.
In Ohio, seven out of 10 violent crimes went unsolved, and in Columbus, 85% weren’t solved.
The researchers said failing to arrest people who commit acts of violence undermines public safety and people’s trust in government. Despite a general decline in violent crime — apart from a spike in 2020 — unsolved violent crime rates rose from 58% in 2012 to 63% in 2022, according to the study.
Violent crime: Police fail to make arrests or solve 7 in 10 violent crimes in Ohio, report found