Homicide: A Year on Murderous Roads

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Homicide: A Year on murderous streets (English title: Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets ) is a book of American author and television producer David Simon in 1991. The book accompanies a layer of homicide (English "Homicide Section.") the city of Baltimore , Maryland over a year. It served as a template for the television series Homicide (original title: Homicide: Life on the Street ), individual scenes were also taken over for the series The Wire . The German first edition was published by Verlag Kunstmann in 2011 .

content

David Simon, who was previously a police reporter for the daily newspaper Baltimore Sun , had unimpeded access to the offices of the detectives during 1988 as a "police intern" and accompanied them on their operations and investigations. In the two-shift operation of the homicide squad, which at the time had to process around 250 homicides per year, Simon was assigned to Lieutenant Gary d'Addario's unit, which in turn was divided into three teams, each with five detectives and a sergeant at the head was.

In their investigations, the detectives differentiate between easy-to-solve cases with obvious suspects ("Dunker") and mysterious murders ("Whodunit"), which often cannot be cleared up even after weeks or months of investigations. The author comes to the conclusion that the exact and as early as possible investigation of the crime scene and the willingness of witnesses to testify are usually decisive for the success of an investigation . A key role is also played by the detectives' ability to persuade suspects to confess during interrogation despite their right to remain silent. Forensics and forensic medicine , on the other hand, seldom provide decisive insights; the motive for the crime only plays a subordinate role.

Depending on whether more "Dunker" or "Whodunits" are to be dealt with, the clearing rate of a unit rises or falls. D'Addario is put under pressure by his superiors when his shift awareness rate drops to 36 percent over the course of the year. By December, however, it will rise again to over 70 percent, which is slightly above the national average.

The great majority of the acts described take place - often for comparatively trivial reasons - in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, particularly frequently in the drug environment of West Baltimore. The decline of urban society in this part of the city becomes tangible in many passages. The everydayness, senselessness and cruelty of the murders are reflected in the rough manners and cynical language of the police officers, who are also described by Simon as largely professional and conscientious in the exercise of their profession.

In addition to “Dunkers” and “Whodunits”, there is another category in the unofficial classification of offenses: “Red Ball” refers to cases that the police authorities have an increased interest in clarifying, not least for political reasons. These are often murders in the better residential areas of the city or “real victims”, i.e. innocents who cannot themselves be assigned to the criminal milieu or a drug gang. As examples of "Red Balls", which require more personnel in the homicide squad, the author describes a series of six female murders in a city district, the case of the police officer Gene Cassidy, who was seriously injured in a drug raid, and the killing of John Randolph Scott during a police operation and the brutal sex murder of eleven year old Latonya Wallace. The investigations into this high-profile case, which lasted several months, but were ultimately unsuccessful despite multiple interrogations of a suspect, take up a large part of Homicide .

In the course of the chronologically structured report , some detectives gain a particularly sharp profile, including Donald Worden, a clarified investigator shortly before the end of his career, Harry Edgerton, who often investigates on his own, thereby missing out on other missions and making himself unpopular with some colleagues, and the young Tom Pellegrini, buried in the Latonya Wallace case.

In digressions Simon examines the methods of the autopsy of murder victims at the Forensic Medicine Institute and the further processing of cases through the judiciary , with the accused to the chagrin of investigators often barter for by an admission of guilt a lighter sentence, without a hearing before a jury comes .

reception

The book received consistently positive reviews from German-speaking reviewers, primarily due to its authenticity and the clarification of a previously little-known spectrum of modern American society.

The Germany radio praised in the program book market , the "fantastic complex, oppressive realistic and detailed" view. Thomas Gross wrote in the time about the "Fury" the narrator David Simon: "In the manic hold every gesture, every last little details from the inner Biorhythm a big city, he accuses the politics of his country."

Jan Füchtjohann spoke in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of a “strong impression of authenticity”, while Anne Haeming on Spiegel online emphasized the author's “beneficial seriousness” with which he tried to approach the truth. Sylvia Staude described Simon's long report in the Frankfurter Rundschau as a “piece of naked, evil truth (...) about our world, the USA, the city of Baltimore, its inhabitants, its drug dealers and violent criminals, the dirt on the streets, houses and hearts ".

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Murderous streets from Deadwood to Dortmund . dradio.de. October 28, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  2. ↑ The second face of America . zeit.de. September 5, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  3. ↑ Murderous everyday life . sueddeutsche.de. August 31, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  4. ↑ A book like a packet of coke . spiegel.de. September 17, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  5. ↑ Little mouse with a cool look . fr-online.de. September 20, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2013.