As the police recruitment crisis continues, specific departments of police agencies feel the loss more than others. For some police agencies, cold cases are getting colder with few detectives left to work them.
Syracuse police was proud to have a dedicated Cold Case Unit of three detectives before the labor shortages. Syracuse Police Department Deputy Chief Derek McGork is in charge of criminal investigations in the city of Syracuse, and this includes the Cold Case Unit.
“So, we define a cold case as any homicide or prolonged missing person investigation where homicide is suspected that’s over five years old,” said McGork.
With a workforce that has gone from a team of 520 to 380, Syracuse police still have about 80 cold cases to work.
“At the moment, we don’t have a cold case squad. There are no detectives that are assigned to the cold case squad. Really, it comes down to a resource issue for us. Our current staffing levels don’t allow us to staff a cold case squad. Over the course of the last three or four years, as people have retired, we have lost the staffing in that unit and we just have not been able to replace the detectives in that unit because we’ve needed them in other areas of the police department,” said McGork.
He adds that the cases are far from forgotten.
“The cold cases are spread out now among our case investigators. It’s not that there not assigned. It’s not that they’re never going to be looked at. And certainly, as information comes in specific to a cold case, it will be investigated just as it always was,” said McGork.
According to McGork, despite the staffing struggles, the priority is to provide closure for hurting families, like the Stackhouses, who have been missing their son, Larry Jr., since 2005.
The Syracuse Police Department asks everyone to review their cold case webpage and call with any tips on information on one of their cold cases.
