By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati homicide detectives, dealing with a 15-year record high of killings, are trying to devise new ways to stem the violence.

An updated analysis of the past eight years of local killings is on Chief Tom Streicher's desk, and a University of Cincinnati professor is starting a more comprehensive look at homicides and other gun crimes as part of a federal grant.

"We'll have to see what else can be done,'' said Lt. Roger Wolf, who heads the homicide unit. "There's got to be something. Now, every time it seems we get caught up on one, we get another.''

The rising number of homicides is a problem facing many cities nationwide.

In Cleveland, where Mayor Jane Campbell earlier this year convened police and court officials when her city's homicide rate had quadrupled by May, there have been 89 homicides this year, compared with 82 for 2001 - an 8.5 percent jumpYet at the same time, Indianapolis' 81 killings is a nine-year low. And New York City saw fewer than 600 homicides - less than any year since 1963.

New York authorities attribute the decline to more police officers and to Compstat, the department's computer crime-mapping system to spot trends and plan strategy.

"It's varying by places,'' said Dr. James Frank, the UC associate professor who will research Cincinnati gun crimes as part of a new federal Project Safe Neighborhoods grant. "In some places, raw numbers are up; in some places, rates are up. In some places, they're down.''

There's one key difference in Cincinnati's statistics - this year's 64 includes no one killed by police. That's in contrast to five included in last year's 63 homicides.

Subtracting those "police-intervention'' deaths, that means the number of citizens killing citizens actually jumped from 58 to 64, an increase of just over 10 percent.

The latest local killing, the Sunday morning fatal shooting of Allen Lawson, a 35-year-old therapist at United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Cincinnati, doesn't fit the more common pattern.

Mr. Lawson was killed, Cincinnati police confirmed Monday, by computer specialist Philip Rieke, whose wife, Pam, also worked at the UCP human services agency. Mrs. Rieke was shot in the leg, but not seriously hurt. A police report filed Sunday night said Mr. Rieke believed Mr. Lawson was having an affair with his wife.

Most homicides now are related to drugs, detectives say, not domestic situations.

The connection to drugs is also what makes homicides increasingly difficult to solve - witnesses are reluctant, Lt. Wolf said.

"People ask me: Am I safe?'' Lt. Wolf said. "I say, if you're not buying drugs from a dealer, if you're not selling drugs, if you're not selling counterfeit drugs, your risk factor goes way, way down.''

Research done by police Sgt. Lisa Thomas showed what most police officers already know - that most Cincinnati homicide victims and suspects over the past four or five years were young, black and male. An updated version of that research now sitting on Chief Streicher's desk is more comprehensive, officials say, but they're not certain when it will be released.

Lt. Wolf said he won't ask for more detectives, because "everyone needs more people. The districts need more people, too.'' There might be other internal changes that can be made, he said, similar to those made after the city's homicide rate jumped 57 percent last year, from 40 in 2000 to 63.

That spike, Lt. Wolf said, helped lead to a greater focus on prosecuting gun crimes in federal court, where defendants usually get more prison time, and to separating bank robberies from homicide detectives' caseload. The latter resulted in a better solve rate this year for both killings (about 50 percent) and bank heists (about 75 heists).

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com