# Why crime clearance rates have fallen

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/why-crime-clearance-rates-have-fallen/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Garrett Langley](https://realalpha.app/people/garrett-langley/) · Founder & CEO, Flock Safety
- Host: [Erik Torenberg](https://realalpha.app/people/erik-torenberg/) · General partner, Andreessen Horowitz · Helped build Product Hunt; founded On Deck, Village Global and Turpentine.
- Show: a16z Podcast
- Episode: [“How We Can Eliminate Crime” | Ben Horowitz and Garrett Langley](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/), Dec 17, 2025
- Moment: 19:44 to 23:06 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/why-crime-clearance-rates-have-fallen/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1184

## Quote

> “outside of Vegas, the international average is around 47% clearance rate. So you have **a coin flip**.”
> — [Garrett Langley](https://realalpha.app/people/garrett-langley/) at [22:27](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1347) · a16z Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Witnesses may risk their lives by testifying, so many stay silent.
2. Random violence is harder to solve than crimes among people who know each other.
3. Evidence and caseloads have grown faster than staffing and investigative tools.

## About this segment

Garrett Langley lays out several reasons cases are harder to solve, from lower witness cooperation to staffing gaps. The result is a stark estimate: outside Vegas, murder suspects have roughly a coin-flip chance of getting away.

From ““How We Can Eliminate Crime” | Ben Horowitz and Garrett Langley”, Dec 17, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[19:57](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1197) Garrett, can you see more about why sort of the, I don't know if it's the clearance rate or just the sort of rate at which we catch murders or solve crimes has been dropping and, you know? Yeah. Well, I think I'll provide one positive reason why clearance rates are down and the rest is very negative. On a positive side, our expectations of a society to arrest someone have gone up, which is good, right?

[20:19](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1219) I think the number of people who you hear about getting released 10 years later, because now we have DNA, or 10 years later because now we have video events, like, that's actually a good thing, right? It should be harder to put someone in jail for life. That's one reason, right? Like, that's a good thing. Some of that's from TV. You know, you watch NCIS, and you're just like, there's cameras everywhere, kind of.

[20:41](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1241) So that's the one. The second is, and Ben mentioned this, witness cooperation is gone. I mean, what's the personal benefit of testifying in a homicide besides putting your own life at risk? So no one shows up, which is a huge problem. Societally, we've given up on pretending that we're going to help you. So that's the second issue. Third issue is a pretty big mixed shift in crime. So if you think about the 60s, 70s, 80s, the majority of crime was domestic.

[21:08](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1268) You would kill a partner. You would kill a girlfriend or boyfriend. So it was not randomized crime. Now the majority of homicides are random. It is a drug deal gone wrong. It is a gang rivalry over territory. That is the predominant type of crime. That is way harder to solve. Because if it was a traditional type, you go, okay, let's check the family. Great. We're done. Case closed. Fourth one, the amount of evidence has gone up.

[21:37](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1297) in a positive way, but faster than both skill set and technology has kept pace. So even though, let's pick on Vegas, Vegas has hundreds, probably thousands, tens of thousands of cameras. You gotta go search them. You gotta go put it together. Like, that doesn't just, you know, like AI is catching up. And nobody's watching the camera. No one's watching them, right? And like, we can look at recent events where, you know, there've been these, you know, shootings on college campuses and they're like, why don't they find them faster?

[22:02](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1322) There's thousands of cameras. I'm like, the technology's not there yet. Now, Flock has some tools to help with that, but we're not deployed everywhere. And the last one, which we hit on, was just staffing. We talked about early retirement. So even though, let's pick on Atlanta. Atlanta was at a low, was at 60% staffed. They're now up to 75, 80. That gap is all 21-year-olds. Yeah. They have no idea how to solve a homicide.

[22:28](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1348) They will in 20 years. But so your seasoned, experienced detectives have all retired. Wow. And so it's this compounding effect where it doesn't look pretty good. And that's why, you know, outside of Vegas, the international average is around 47% clearance rate. So you have a coin flip. For murder. You have a 53% chance of getting away with murder. Flip a coin. Flip a coin. And you got to imagine if you're, you know, upper quartile, you shouldn't get away with it forever.

[22:54](https://realalpha.app/v/tR6g3zrk7eM/?t=1374) Wow. Yep.