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The Killing Fields

As Cleveland's murder rate rises, the families of victims wait for justice that never comes.

By Lisa Rab 

The news came on Mother's Day in the form of a detective at Marsha Carter's front door. Her 23-year-old son, Michael -- her lone hope for grandchildren -- had been beaten, shot three times, and left to die in a parking lot.

The night before, Michael left their Bedford Heights home to meet friends at an after-hours club near East 36th and Perkins. But he never made it home. Early the next morning, police found his 250 pounds of jovial flesh, along with his bloodstained car, in a lot near the club.

He was Carter's only child, and she adored him with the ferocity reserved for blessings that come late in life. He was a good kid -- clean record, high-school diploma, not caught up in drugs or gangs. He worked as a pallet jack operator in a warehouse and hoped to go to college someday.

At least Michael died near a club. There were plenty of people around, and a man claiming to be his best friend was working the door. Cell phone calls were exchanged up until his death. Someone must have seen something.

But as the months passed, Carter and her husband, Michael Sr., found only disappointment. Police said they would raid the club, but never did. The detectives on the case kept changing. Soon, they stopped returning Marsha's calls. More than two years later, the case has not been solved.

"It's just so frustrating," she says. "I've never dealt with anything like this before."

At 62, she grieves for the loss of her entire lineage. She tries to hold herself together with an upswept hairdo and rouged cheeks, but it's no use. Tears flow every time she tries to tell the story. "He was my only baby," she says. "I can't get over it."

And so the Carters take their place among hundreds of the city's mourners. Their children are dead. And they are convinced the police don't care.

This is your job: You get to work at 4 p.m., already behind before your first cup of coffee. There are lists of witnesses to call, tips to track down, cases you've been working six months or a year to solve. You're a homicide detective. And you're praying no one dies that night.

Your phone is ringing off the hook from families wanting answers: What are you doing on my son's case? But you don't have time to talk. Detective Michael Beaman, a 14-year veteran of the squad, remembers when it was a 30-man unit. Now, between desk work, sick leave, and police shooting inquiries, only 12 people are available to pick up new cases.

And this is Cleveland, Ohio, not Law & Order.

When the call comes in on a fresh body, the first 72 hours are crucial for locating evidence and finding witnesses. But you're often searching for suspects known only as Booboo or Little Man. You don't have much help. While Law & Order crime scenes feature swarms of investigators brushing for fingerprints and collecting DNA samples, Cleveland, on any given shift, has a CSI team of one or two -- covering every crime in the city.

You may spend 5 hours on a freezing night working the scene, then 10 more writing up the paperwork. Even if you manage to gather enough evidence for an indictment, there's still months of pre-trial preparation, then the trial itself, where you'll have the privilege of being painted as a moron by some defense lawyer, all while trying to keep your eyes open before clocking in for the night shift again. If you're lucky, you'll get a shower before arriving back in court the next day.

"You never catch up. You start off with a case or two, and from there you're always behind," says Detective Melvin Smith.

It wasn't always this way. Starting in the late '90s, the city enjoyed a nationwide lull in violence that came with a prosperous economy. While the number of killings hovered around 70 to 80 a year, Cleveland's homicide squad prided itself on solving 75 percent of them -- a success rate well above the national average.

Then the calm exploded.

In 2005, the year Michael Carter died, the number of murders in Cleveland skyrocketed. By year's end, 114 people had been killed, earning Cleveland the 11th-highest homicide rate among the nation's big cities. But while the squad's workload soared, its manpower didn't. Detectives were drowning. Just as they launched one investigation, another would land on their desks.

"Now you have a tendency to feel like you've just got your finger in the dike, trying to hold it from bursting," Beaman says.

Last year, the squad cleared just 51 percent of its 119 cases. This year, which saw 20 homicides in a 22-day stretch over the summer, they're on track for another hellish body count.

To police union chief Steve Loomis, the problem boils down to simple math. In 2004, then-Mayor Jane Campbell laid off 263 officers to plug a hole in the city's bleeding budget. Detectives were moved from specialized units back to the streets. The gang unit and a fugitive strike force were eliminated -- though both were critical to arresting bad guys before they morphed into murderers.

"The staffing level is as low as it's ever been," Loomis says of homicide. "They literally don't have a chance to work on the unsolved [cases]."

Whether Cleveland detectives are squeezed tighter than those in other cities is hard to say. Solving about half their cases is in line with the national rate for big cities.

The department has no plans to bolster homicide, according to police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho, since current staffing is actually more than the "recommended" level.

Still, that's of little comfort to the men who become strangers to their families after working 15-hour shifts. Or to the hundreds of mothers like Marsha Carter, all waiting for news that never comes.

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