Abstract
COVID-19 affected every aspect of our society, including homicide incidence, investigation, and prosecution. This case study examines the impact of COVID-19 on homicide investigation in one large metropolitan police department. Two homicide investigators were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. A thematic analytic approach was used to identify two overarching themes: fear and changes to investigative procedure. Detectives feared getting COVID-19 and possibly transmitting it to their loved ones, particularly in the early day of the pandemic when little was known about transmission. Homicide investigators faced several changes to how they conducted interviews, met with families, and sought warrants. While this case study only offers a glimpse into the challenges faced by law enforcement departments due to COVID-19, it is clear that homicide investigations were greatly affected and may continue to be so. More research is needed to unpack the relationship between COVID-19 and policies that were implemented in response to it.
Historically, homicide rates in the United States have fluctuated with societal and world events, changes in laws like firearm regulation, and shifts in the economic health and wellbeing of communities. COVID-19, a viral pandemic that dramatically transformed society due to its required social isolation and distancing, appears to have affected homicide as well. While other factors may have also affected homicide rates, such as increased civil unrest during this period, the change in US homicide rates, suggests that the COVID-19 era has been marked by increased violence. In 2019, the homicide rate in the United States was about 6 homicides per 100,000 persons; after the start of the pandemic in 2020, the homicide rate increased to roughly 7.8 per 100,000 persons (Anderson, 2021). The thirty percent change represents a historic uptick in the rate of homicide, the largest 1-year increase in more than a century (Anderson, 2021).
In addition to the increase in investigative caseloads due to the heightened homicide rate, law enforcement departments had to contend with a shifting landscape of protocols for contacting witnesses and suspects, scene investigations, and court. In this case study, we interviewed two detectives in the homicide unit of a large metropolitan police department on the East coast to increase our understanding of how COVID-19 and its related policies affected the lived experiences of frontline workers.
Methods
Sample
Interviews were conducted with a male Detective Sergeant and a male Detective Corporal from the same, large metropolitan homicide unit on the East coast. One participant received a Master’s degree, and the other a Bachelor’s prior to joining law enforcement. Collectively, the participants had over three decades of experience in law enforcement, two of which were spent in homicide units.
Procedures
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant about the impact of COVID-19 on scene response, investigation, arrest, and court proceedings. Interviews were conducted by the first author through Zoom. Interview questions were developed in collaboration with a law enforcement partner. The interviews were recorded with knowledge and permission from the participants. Participants were informed that their responses would remain confidential, and they could refuse to answer a question or stop the interview at any point. Once interviews were completed, the audio from the recordings was transcribed and analyzed using a thematic approach. The first author led data analysis with support from the second author. First, the first author familiarized themselves with the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). They then identified words, feelings, or patterns that emerged (codes), which were then refined into themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Due to concerns of anonymity by the officers, only a summary of findings is presented, as they feared quotes could erode their privacy. Permission was granted by the University institutional review board to ethically conduct this research.
Findings
Two primary themes emerged from the data: fear and COVID-19’s effects on homicide investigation. The latter theme contained several sub-themes including staff capacity, masks, meeting with families, warrants, and court closures.
Fear
During COVID, fear of the unknown increased for the unit. During the initial phases of the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding best practices for reducing infection. Despite a lack of clear guidance, homicide investigations had to continue with detectives adapting and adjusting based on their limited understanding of COVID-19, which was continually shifting. Making this more difficult, there was an increase in the number of homicides and, thus, workload for the homicide unit. Given the rate of infection and death early in the pandemic, there was a sense of dread in the unit, like half of them would be dead by the end. Further, detectives were afraid for the health and well-being of their families.
Typical investigatory tasks heightened levels of fear and stress, especially during interviews of witnesses and suspects and the service of a warrant. Detectives felt like they had to force themselves to get over their own fear of COVID-19 so that they could perform their essential tasks, like conducting interviews. Residential search warrants introduced a new level of fear as detectives were quite literally entering the unknown; individuals in a home may have had COVID-19 or been exposed, increasing their risk of contracting the virus. For the department, this fear led to a reduction in the use of residential search warrants as they had to weigh the potential gain of evidence and the risk of infection of a fellow officer, and the potential reduction to their workforce. Further, the risk of infection affected if residential warrants were sought at all. In cases where there was already sufficient evidence to believe that they would get a conviction without the additional evidence, residential warrants were not used. When residential warrants were used, they were executed in a manner to reduce the unit’s exposure: detectives attempted to physically distance themselves from individuals in the home, wore masks, or asked residents to remain in one area of the home.
Additionally, the fear of COVID-19 exposure seemed to magnify distrust in the police and decrease willingness to cooperate among the community as well. During neighborhood canvasses, less residents were willing to open their doors and speak with detectives about investigations. This decreased cooperation delayed the investigation process because detectives did not have additional evidence from the community such as neighbors’ testimony regarding what they saw on the day of the incident. Fear permeated every aspect of homicide investigation, affecting officer capacity and interactions with the community.
COVID-19’s Effects on Homicide Investigation
Staff capacity
Policies related to infection and exposure affected the staff’s capacity to meet the increased caseload during COVID-19. When an officer tested positive for or was exposed to COVID-19, their workload had to be adjusted. Officers who were symptomatic had to take time off and isolate. Officers who had to isolate but were asymptomatic could complete writing tasks, such as search warrants, remotely. However, many aspects of homicide investigation cannot be done remotely, which forced the unit to function with less manpower when detectives isolated, regardless of their symptoms. This loss of manpower additionally affected case decision making, as they had to determine what investigative tasks needed to be prioritized and which needed to be dropped due to a decreased workforce.
Masks and investigation
The required use of masking affected how the police interacted with suspects and witness during investigation. Masking had one of the largest impacts on suspect interviews. A critical part of interrogation is embedded in the ability of the interviewer to read body language and facial expressions. Seasoned investigators rely on cues like when someone begins sweating, their lip quivers, or is showing signs of nervousness or deception to inform the direction of their questioning and approach to evidence collection. Masks dampened this ability and prevented the detection of such nuanced behaviors. Additionally, while witnesses and suspects evading interviews was not new, COVID-19 safety protocols created new evasion tactics that they could use. If an individual claimed that they had been exposed to or were positive for COVID-19 they had to be excused from the interview without contest. This caused delays and complications in the interview process. COVID-19 exasperated situations where individuals had no legal requirement to come in for an interview, offering an excuse to not attend. Detectives could try and sway people to give an interview through mentions of a subpoena down the line, but there was no guarantee that their attempt would be successful. In some instances, this meant that individuals could evade being interviewed indefinitely.
In recent years, the growth in the use of doorbell cameras and CCTV has increased the accessibility of video evidence; making it instrumental in closing cases for detectives. With increased mask-wearing due to the pandemic, suspects could conceal their identity, decreasing the quality of video footage and potential for facial recognition. Masks also allowed witnesses, and in some case suspects, to remain at or leave the scene without officers noticing due to the anonymity of masking.
Meeting with families
Where possible, detectives tried to comply with the three major tenets of reducing the spread of COVID-19: frequently washing one’s hands, socially distancing (6 ft. or more), and wearing masks (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). However, due to how investigations are conducted, some of these requirements created significant barriers to successful investigation, and in some cases required modifications. Masks made it harder to connect with others, especially the families of homicide victims. Pre-pandemic, detectives could go to the family’s home, answer the family’s questions, and keep them updated on the case through frequent in-person meetings. During the pandemic, detectives had to alter interactions with families to meet guidelines by wearing masks, spacing out where possible, and asking if anyone was exposed to or had COVID-19. If they wanted to meet with the victim’s family in person, detectives had to find a large enough room in which to socially distance and were only permitted to speak with one family member at a time. This removed the opportunity to answer questions from all family members simultaneously and potentially gain critical information from them. The dynamic between the detective and the victim’s family is highly important, and social distancing, as well as mask requirements, changed the ways in which the detectives had to interact to maintain the quality of these relationships.
One of the main focuses of detectives is building rapport with the family. Detectives were proactive in their interactions by explaining to families how their behaviors were affected by pandemic policies. For instance, detectives offered a disclaimer acknowledging the sensitivity of the topic they were discussing while explaining that their physical distance and use of masks was from not a lack of concern, but a safety precaution. The loss of non-verbal cues due to mask wearing, made the detectives feel that families required additional reassurance that detectives were listening to them. All of these considerations made it harder to continue regular patterns of communication which affected investigations. Contact was more restricted during the pandemic, and phone calls became the safest and fastest way for detectives to interact with families. While detectives were still giving and getting information, some people were less responsive and accessible over the phone than they may have been in person.
Warrants
Another barrier during the COVID-19 pandemic was differing or changing policies among jurisdictions. For suspects with open warrants, extradition was complicated as procedures for both interviewing and traveling out of state had changed. In the past, suspects would be transported by the jurisdiction in which they were picked up to the police department with the open warrant, presenting an opportunity for detectives to interview the suspect and gather additional information. However, due to the pandemic, suspects were transported directly to the jail to limit the number of people they came into contact with. Though it was possible to conduct interviews in jail, jails were an area of high transmission risk (Chan et al., 2021) and the change in policy seemed to be unnecessarily increasing detectives’ risk. Moreover, the detectives prefer to interview people in their departments because it is their “home turf” and suspects can give longer interviews without of fear of being labeled a “snitch.” Further, audio recording devices are not permitted in many jails, reducing the permissibility of entering evidence in court obtained from jail-based interviews. Given that the interviews conducted in jails held less weight in court, detectives felt that it was often not worth the risk to engage in them.
The search warrant process was also adapted to reduce COVID-19 exposure. Prior to the pandemic, regardless of the time of day, a judge had to be physically located by detectives to approve a search warrant. This in-person requirement was removed during the pandemic. Warrant requests could be emailed, and detectives received an emailed decision, greatly reducing the amount of time it took to get a warrant. However, to reduce their risk of infection as much as possible, the homicide unit still used discretion in seeking search warrants despite the heightened accessibility to judges. Detectives had to make difficult decisions about whether a search warrant was necessary, weighing the potential additional evidence gained to the threat of COVID-19 exposure. When the potential gain of evidence would not surpass the health risks, detectives elected to strengthen their cases using other means.
Court closures
COVID-19 also affected the progression of cases through the criminal justice system. Many courts closed, causing most cases to be suspended until a later date. As homicide investigations and trials tend to be longer than other crimes, this meant that cases from 4 to 5 years before the pandemic remained unadjudicated due to the pandemic delays. These continued delays were of concern for all parties involved. Detectives explained that many families of homicide victims wanted closure in the form of a guilty verdict or a prison sentence to ensure that the perpetrator is going to be punished. COVID-19 further delayed this closure for many families, increasing their feelings of anger, frustration, and exhaustion. Most family members were angry at the system in general, but the relationship between the detectives and families also became strained. Though some were understanding, others expressed frustration toward the detectives and the length of time between arrest and the actual trial. Additionally, some witnesses halted their cooperation after traveling to the courthouse and being denied entry multiple times due to the time and financial costs. The increase in time also increased the risk that witnesses would move out of state, their recall could weaken, or they could be deceased by the time of the trial.
For defendants, the delay in trials raised Fourth Amendment concerns about their right to a speedy trial. This led to more pretrial releases, and the belief among detectives that defendants now had a chance to interfere with their case, such as through witness intimidation. Detectives stated that individuals released pre-trial, now free from the restrictions of jail, could reach witnesses to intimidate or threaten them through text, in person, or even through friends they enlisted to do their bidding. This complicated the detectives’ workload and relationships with the victim’s family members and witnesses. Many family members wanted to know why the defendant was released and how they could be prevented from influencing the case without the restriction of being held pretrial. Detectives worried that court closures and delays could also have the potential to impact the quality of prosecution. Due to rapidly expanding caseloads, prosecutors could potentially not apply the same rigor to cases, particularly older cases. Prosecutors did not have adequate time to prepare for their cases which could have increased pressure to offer plea deals in cases that typically would have gone to trial. Additionally, due to the delay, key witnesses or the original defense attorney or prosecutor may no longer be accessible when the trial began, affecting the quality of the case.
Discussion
This case study offered insight into the effects of COVID-19 and its related policies on homicide investigation in the United States. Detectives reported an increased level of fear due to the new risks associated with the disease. They also reported several changes to investigation procedures resulting from disease mitigation policies including masking, social distancing, and closures. Though it is premature to assert the overall impacts of COVID-19 on homicide investigations, this case study aims to begin the conversation. While qualitative methods are not intended to be generalizable and aim to understand unique conditions, the exploratory nature of the current case study may not adequately represent the local experience of COVID-19’s impact on homicide investigation and more research is needed to understand the effects of COVID-19 nationwide (Creswell, 2013).
Future research should further explore the relationship between COVID-19 and its related policies and homicide. For example, studies should identify the mechanisms, if any, by which COVID-19 affected the spikes in felonies and index crime seen during this era and if these relationships varied by crime type (Boman & Gallupe, 2020). Though calls for service to the police decreased during the pandemic, victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) who are already reluctant to call police, may have increasingly been victimized during lockdowns (Bachman & Saltzmann, 1995; Boman & Gallupe, 2020). With less ability to escape abusive relationships, rates of intimate partner homicide (IPH) must be examined and research is needed to understand the relationship between the pandemic and IPV/IPH (Jetelina et al., 2021; Taub, 2020). Additionally, quantitative research is needed to determine the impact of COVID-19 on case closure rates, witness participation, and warrant execution. Further, prosecutorial decision making should be examined to understand how increased pressure affected plea deal offers, trial preparation, and charges filed. Future qualitative research could examine witness intimidation during this period, and if an increase in pretrial release affected intimidation opportunities. This can be done through the interviews or surveys with prosecutors, victim witness advocates, or trial witnesses.
Future qualitative work could expand on the current case study to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on departments across the country. Exposure to pandemics like COVID-19 is likely to continue (Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, 2020; Nuzzo et al., 2019), and municipalities must learn from the lessons of the current pandemic to better prepare and support law enforcement for future crises. Governments should execute emergency preparedness planning that includes how to conduct investigations and continue court proceedings for future disasters that require social distancing and that prepare for how to support law enforcement officers during times of increased stress and risk. Given the disruption to community relationships during this time, government and law enforcement agencies must also examine how to maintain these critical relationships global emergencies. This case study identified several ways in which homicide investigators were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and offers insight into the lived experience of practitioners trying to respond to homicide.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
