Bubbaworld

In 2005 Tulsans were murdered at a record setting pace. Sixty-two Tulsans were the victims of homicide last year. The year 2006 is off to a worst start, a much worse start, with eight murders within only sixteen days. If that rate continues the homicide toll in Tulsa will exceed last year’s record by at least twenty.

While these statistics are both frightening and disheartening the most shocking statistic of all is that the Tulsa Police Department has only six homicide detectives who in addition to working murder cases are also required to work cases involving non-fatal shootings, stabbings, assaults, kidnappings, officer involved shootings, suicides and missing persons.

That these six detectives solved seventy-eight percent of last year’s homicide cases in Tulsa is remarkable. That their multi-year average for solving homicide cases is eight-two percent is even more remarkable in light of the national average of only sixty-five percent of homicide cases being solved.

But there are limits to human endurance, limits to how much needless and violent death one person can stand and limits to the number of hours a person can do their duty before they start making mistakes. Mistakes that may prove fatal to these dedicated public servants who frequently come face to face with the most violent of criminals.

That within the next few months two additional homicide detectives are to be added to the Tulsa Police Department is good news, as far as it goes. But what is needed is a major over-haul of the way the City of Tulsa funds, staffs and views it police department. Unless the folks down at Tulsa City Hall wake up and smell the coffee, Tulsa is destined to becoming the per-capita murder capitol of the nation if it isn’t already and this in spite of the truly remarkable efforts of its grossly under-staffed detective division.

While every city has ‘needs’, infrastructure to build and maintain, recreation and tourist accommodations to consider and of course trash to collect, potholes to patch and countless other issues none of these things mean much to the Tulsan laying dead in the street, gunned down by a criminal that has possibly killed more people than the City of Tulsa has homicide detectives.

Of all the priorities confronting Tulsa’s elected officials the number one priority must be the safety of the city’s residents. How that safety is insured in by putting more cops on the street, adding more homicide detectives or freeing those already on staff from investigating anything other than murders and hiring other detectives to staff a new division for everything except homicides.

To those that would ask, “What about the costs?” one can only look at last year’s record number of homicides in Tulsa, this year’s bloody start and then get back with me on the costs…