Catching killers used to be easier....

Nearly five years have passed, and Joy Turner is still waiting to see her son’s killer behind bars.

On the night of May 2, 1989, Henry Harrison II, 19, was gunned down as he stood outside a house in Compton, an innocent victim felled less than a mile from his family’s home.

Homicide investigators identified two suspects--both gang members--but the key witness refused to testify after he was beaten up. To this day, Turner lives in a pained limbo, furious with police for failing to catch the killer and for filing the case away.

Harrison’s case underscores a growing trend: Police are cracking fewer murder cases than ever. Three decades ago, authorities throughout the U.S. solved more than 92% of homicides. Today, the rate has dropped to 65%.

In the Southeast area, the situation is worse: Just 46% of homicides were cleared with an arrest in 1992, the latest year for which figures are available, according to statistics from the State Department of Justice. Police cleared 76% of their cases in 1971, the earliest year with complete statistics for the area.

Authorities say the increase in unsolved cases is due largely to the changing nature of murder. In the past, detectives spent their time investigating “smoking gun” murders, in which victim and assailant knew one another and the killer often left ample evidence, such as weapons and fingerprints, at the crime scene.

Now, more people are being killed in drive-by shootings, drug deals and carjackings. Arguments between strangers, which years ago would have been settled with words or fists, also are more likely to end in gunfire.

At crime scenes, investigators are left with few clues beyond a body and a handful of bullet casings. Even when there are witnesses, they are often too afraid to cooperate.

Homicide units, meanwhile, can’t keep up with the increasing number of new cases crossing their desks. Investigators are forced to prioritize murders, pursuing those with solid leads, setting aside others that offer little promise of an arrest.

“Murders are like puzzles,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Stanley White, who has hit dead-ends on a number of murders in the Southeast area in recent years. “When we can’t solve the puzzle, we can’t get to the district attorney. No arrests, no convictions, nothing is resolved.”

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Authorities say many random killings result from escalating gang violence, with rival sets retaliating in an unending string of drive-by shootings that often occur at night when no one is around. In Long Beach, a bloody turf war between Asian and Latino gangs accounted for about half of the record 137 murders last year, police say.

Inevitably, innocent victims have been caught in the cross-fire.

On a warm evening last August, Choi Binh Trinh, 30, was gunned down as he chatted with friends on the front porch of an apartment building on East 20th Street, a block from Long Beach City College.

According to eyewitness accounts, two Latino men approached the group of Asians, called out the name of a gang and opened fire, killing Trinh and a second man, Noub Anthony Hov, said Long Beach Detective Dennis Robbins.

Police said Hov, 23, apparently was involved in gangs but Trinh was not. Trinh lived with his wife and 1 1/2-year-old son in an apartment next to the building where he was shot. He left his native Vietnam for the United States more than a decade ago to avoid serving in the army. Fluent in Vietnamese, Khmer and English, Trinh was self-employed, helping other immigrants get disability and unemployment benefits, said his brother, Con Trinh. “He told me he was going to buy a house just a couple days before he was killed,” Con Trinh said. “He was too young to die.”

More than seven months after the shooting, police have few leads: They know only that the suspects drove off in a blue car that resembled a late 1970s Pontiac Ventura without hubcaps. Detectives say they are willing to continue their investigation, but have nothing to go on. They believe that witnesses know more, but are afraid to talk or don’t care enough to get involved. Trinh’s wife has since moved from Long Beach.

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To Robbins, the obstacles in the Trinh case are all too familiar. Robbins and his partner have yet to solve four other Asian-Latino gang killings that occurred in the past eight months within a mile of the Trinh shooting. In those cases, witnesses offered vague descriptions of suspects but few hard leads, such as the name of the shooter or a license plate number.

White of the Sheriff’s Department also knows how easily an investigation can be stumped. White has failed to solve a double homicide in Hawaiian Gardens, although a witness told him what happened and police recovered two semiautomatic handguns used in the killings.

White said the witness told him that two victims--Jose Trinidad Meza, 27, and Jesus Martinez, 37--were shot several times during a drug deal last August in Meza’s apartment in the 21800 block of Belshire Avenue. Five suspects escaped with 4 1/2 pounds of cocaine--worth about $30,000, White said. Both victims were illegal immigrants and drug dealers, he said.

Meza’s wife, who was away from the apartment at the time of the shooting, refused to talk and has since fled, White said. Meza’s nephew, a college student visiting from Mexico, survived the shootout inside the apartment and told investigators what happened. But he has since returned to Mexico and authorities have lost contact. White also has been unable to trace the handguns to their owners.

“No one’s talking, no one’s cooperating,” a frustrated White said. “I have a series of these cases. The fact is, they (witnesses and family members) refuse to cooperate.”

White said that cases which involve illegal immigrants rarely are solved. Often, detectives have trouble tracking down the true names of victims and assailants who have no legal identification.

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Language also creates barriers between investigators and witnesses who speak languages other than English. And undocumented immigrants are reluctant to speak up for fear of deportation, veteran detectives say.

Witnesses are reluctant to get involved, particularly those in gang-plagued neighborhoods who may face retaliation. Some have been known to recant their initial statements after being threatened, investigators say.

“People tell us, ‘I can’t testify. I’ve got kids. They’ll shoot up my home,’ ” said Sgt. John Swanson, who investigated the five-year-old Henry Harrison murder in Compton. “If you put yourself in their place, you can understand. If I didn’t know the guy who got killed, why would I risk my life?”

Police attempt to relocate witnesses whose lives may be in jeopardy. But funding from the state is limited. The county spent about $1,550 per case in 1992 to relocate witnesses--barely enough to cover first and last month’s rent in many cases.

“We don’t have the money to do anything more extensive,” said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, which administers state witness protection funds. “Sometimes, we’ll put food on their table if they don’t have any money. But then they’re on their own.”

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Even when there are witnesses, cash-strapped police departments often lack the resources to fully investigate cases. Funding in many departments has been diverted from investigative units to substations and patrols as city officials respond to public demands for community policing, officials say.

In Long Beach, the number of homicides has more than doubled in the last decade, but the number of homicide investigators has gone from seven to 10. Meanwhile, the police department has opened six storefront community police centers in the last 18 months.

The sheriff’s homicide bureau, which serves 13 Southeast cities, also has shrunk. In 1982, the bureau’s 93 investigators handled 320 murders throughout Los Angeles County. A decade later, 78 investigators handled 565 killings. Sheriff’s investigators are dispatched from a central office in Commerce.

Overworked and frustrated, detectives must tackle numerous murders at once. Promising cases receive attention while others go untouched for months or years.

“A good investigator has to play God with his cases,” White said. “He only has so many hours in a day. Every new case he gets takes away from another.”

As time passes and new cases pile up, old ones are set aside, police concede. Swanson, the Compton investigator who originally handled the Henry Harrison murder, has since been promoted to a supervisor’s job in the patrol division. The detective now assigned to the case referred inquiries to Swanson.

“There are a lot of homicides that have leads, but we are so far behind we don’t have time to follow (up),” said Lt. Joe Flores, who supervises Compton’s homicide division. “I would like to have five more investigators down here, but then you’d have to shut down the helicopter unit and get rid of a few motorcycle units.”

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Many investigators say their workloads create tremendous stress, and some have been known to leave their jobs temporarily. Sheriff’s Sgt. Jacque Franco has seen her blood pressure rise in the nine years she has been working the Homicide Bureau. She tries to relax by spending time with family and friends outside of work.

“Homicide can consume your life,” Franco said. “You have to pull back and try not to let it bother you so much if you can’t solve a case or get anybody to cooperate. You have to accept that you’re not going to solve all the cases.”

Victims’ families aren’t interested in hearing about budget problems or high blood pressure. They want to see killers behind bars. Some families accuse police of ignoring cases in poor and minority communities, focusing instead on sensational incidents that make headlines.

Joy Turner and others say they resent the international attention on the recent carjack slayings of two Japanese exchange students in San Pedro, while similar cases elsewhere go unnoticed. In the San Pedro case, Los Angeles police mounted an all-out investigation that ended with charges being filed against two suspects within a week of the incident.

“I have this sense of frustration and rage,” said Turner, who described her son as a churchgoing youth and Compton High School graduate who planned to enlist in the Navy to escape the violence around him.

She has turned her living room into a makeshift shrine, with family photos scattered throughout. The display is dominated by an enlarged prom photo of her son. Turner is all the more indignant because her son’s father was a Compton police officer at the time of the shooting. Turner said she called the department every week for two years to inquire about the status of the investigation, but stopped when police continually said they had nothing new to report. “I feel like nobody’s interested,” she said. “They (Compton detectives) have no sensitivity to the victim’s family. They’re apathetic.”

Flores, who oversees Compton’s homicide division, said he sympathizes with Turner, but said investigators have done all they can to solve the case.

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For Swanson, the Harrison case has been particularly unsettling. He is a friend of Harrison’s father, who now lives in Las Vegas. Although Swanson believes he knows who committed the crime, he hasn’t been able to close the case. Two suspects were arrested soon after the May, 1989, shooting, but were released after witnesses refused to come forward.

“I feel like I failed my friend,” Swanson said. “But there’s nothing more I can do. This case would have been solved if we had witnesses coming forward. They told me what went down but they didn’t want to (testify).”

Although he no longer works in the homicide division, Swanson keeps a file on the case and hopes that new leads will surface. But he doubts the case will be solved.

Frustrated with police, relatives of several murder victims in the Southeast area have launched their own informal investigations. They comb neighborhoods, talking with youths, copying gang graffiti from walls, taking pictures of crime scenes--anything that might help open new leads. While police do not encourage the homespun investigations, they often rely on the tips that family members provide.

Few have gone as far as Teresa Wheel, whose 19-year-old son, Kevin, was gunned down in an apparently random drive-by attack in Hawaiian Gardens nearly three years ago. Sheriff’s investigators, having exhausted their leads, are no longer searching for the killers.

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Wheel continues to investigate. She has interviewed gang members in Hawaiian Gardens and stapled more than 1,000 reward posters on telephone poles. She will appear on a segment of the television series “Unsolved Mysteries” next month in hopes the airing will help shake loose new leads.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Franco said that Wheel, who has supplied the names of witnesses and three possible suspects in the shooting, has provided key information. But without witnesses who are willing testify in court, the case cannot move forward, Franco said.

Still, Wheel won’t give up. Her family is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the killers, who are believed to be Artesia gang members. Several times a year, Wheel goes to the intersection of 183rd Street and Pioneer Boulevard, a few blocks from where she believes the killers live, and stands for several hours with a cardboard sign that reads “Please help me find Kevin’s murderers.”

On one recent afternoon, a young man in his early 20s approached Wheel and, anonymously, told her the name of the driver involved in the shooting and the make of the vehicle. The information, which Wheel passed along to Franco, confirmed anonymous tips investigators had received in the past. “I don’t know what else I can do to help this along,” Wheel said. “Hopefully, someone will come up and tell me they’ll testify. I’ll tell you one thing, the people in Hawaiian Gardens and Artesia won’t forget about Kevin.”

The National Trend

The number of homicides committed and the percentage cleared by arrests throughout the United States over three decades:

Year Number Cleared 1960 9,136 92% 1970 8,898 86% 1980 21,509 72% 1990 21,950 67% 1992* 22,692 65%

* Latest year for which figures are available.

Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program

The Regional Trend

Homicides cleared by arrests for Southeast-area cities in 1983 and 1992:

City 1983 Cleared Percentage 1992 Cleared Homicides Homicides Artesia 1 0 0% 4 1 Bellflower 2 1 50% 9 6 Cerritos 2 2 100% 5 0 Compton 42 28 67% 58 29 Downey 3 2 67% 5 1 Hawaiian Gardens 2 0 0% 5 0 La Habra Heights 1 0 0% 1 0 Lakewood 2 0 0% 5 2 La Mirada 2 2 100% 1 0 Long Beach 60 36 60% 104 62 Lynwood 12 4 33% 19 4 Montebello 1 0 0% 4 3 Norwalk 3 0 0% 7 5 Paramount 5 1 20% 7 2 Pico Rivera 1 2* 100% 15 4 Santa Fe Springs 1 0 0% 5 0 Signal Hill 2 2 100% 1 0 Whittier 2 1 50% 4 2 Totals 144 81 56% 260 121

City Percentage Artesia 25% Bellflower 67% Cerritos 0% Compton 50% Downey 20% Hawaiian Gardens 0% La Habra Heights 0% Lakewood 40% La Mirada 0% Long Beach 60% Lynwood 21% Montebello 75% Norwalk 71% Paramount 28% Pico Rivera 27% Santa Fe Springs 0% Signal Hill 0% Whittier 50% Totals 46%

* The number of cleared cases can include arrests for homicides from previous years.

Source: California Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Information Center.