Chester City Among Highest Homicide Rates in U.S., Only a Third of Cases Solved: Report

A newspaper says only about a third of the homicides in the violence-wracked suburban Philadelphia city of Chester are ever solved.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that its analysis of every homicide indicates that Chester police have closed about one-third of the city's 323 slayings since 2000.

The paper said the homicide rate in the four-mile-square city of 34,000 averages 53 per 100,000 between 2000 and 2014, outranking other U.S. cities for which data is available. It's more than double Philadelphia's homicide rate of 21 per 100,000 and slightly more than the rate in Camden, New Jersey and New Orleans.

Officials cite a spiral of joblessness and poverty after the manufacturing base collapsed, followed by drugs, gangs, a lack of resources for police and a pervasive "no snitch" culture.