South Bend's Mayor Says the Old Homicide Unit Solved 54% of City Killings. The Prosecutor's Count Says 68%.

James Mueller, now South Bend's mayor, at the South Bend Armory expansion ribbon cutting in January 2016. Photo: Indiana National Guard / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Same city. Same six years. Two government offices looked at the record of the St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Unit on South Bend killings and came back with answers about 14 points apart.

At a news conference on Oct. 1, South Bend Mayor James Mueller said the countywide unit investigated 103 South Bend homicides from 2016 to 2021 and cleared 56 of them, a 54% rate. Since the city pulled its detectives out and took the work in-house, he said, the South Bend Police Department's Violent Crimes Unit has investigated 88 homicides and cleared 80, or 91%, WVPE reported.

One week later, the office of St. Joseph County Prosecutor Kenneth P. Cotter published its own count, drawn from what it called audited records in the unit's files, WIBC reported. The prosecutor's office also said it could not verify the figures City Hall had released.

The prosecutor's rows

Here is the prosecutor's year-by-year record for South Bend cases, as published Oct. 8:

2016: 15 homicides, 12 solved. 2017: 17 homicides, 10 solved. 2018: 12 homicides, 8 solved. 2019: 15 homicides, 11 solved. 2020: 32 homicides, 21 solved. 2021, through Oct. 15: 16 homicides, 11 solved.

Add those up and you get 107 homicides and 73 solved, roughly 68%. WNDU put the office's rate at 69%. Either way, it isn't 54%.

The gap isn't just the percentage. The county counts four more cases than the city does, and 17 more solved ones. Under the prosecutor's standard, a case counts as solved when charges are filed, when the death is ruled accidental or justified, or when the suspect dies before prosecution. None of the coverage of the mayor's Oct. 1 presentation that we reviewed explains what definition the city used to arrive at its numbers, or how it counted the 80 cases it says SBPD has cleared since 2021.

That matters, because the 91% figure is the whole case for keeping things as they are, and no independent check of it against the county's standard has been made public. Lee Stevens, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, told WNDU the office “cannot speak to” the numbers released by the mayor and South Bend police.

“Misinformed and dangerous”

The mayor didn't hedge when he rolled out his numbers. “Ideas to revert back to a former time is really a call to have fewer homicides solved and make our community more dangerous than it is today,” Mueller said, according to WVPE. His spokeswoman said the office was “aware that a couple of political candidates are also pushing this misleading and dangerous policy change,” but wouldn't name them.

After the prosecutor's figures came out, Mueller's chief of staff, Troy Warner, held the line, telling the South Bend Tribune that “any suggestion that South Bend return to that model is misinformed and dangerous,” WNDU reported. The Tribune's own summary of the week took four words: “The numbers don't match.”

Those are strong words to aim at residents asking questions after a violent September, especially when the city's own math is now the thing in dispute.

A police chief on the ballot

The fight isn't happening in a vacuum. The St. Joseph County Republican Party released an ad on the morning of Mueller's news conference saying that “while St. Joseph families deal with the consequences; Democrats are focused on everything but fixing the problem,” WSBT reported. County GOP Chair Jackie Horvath praised rank-and-file officers but said, “I just don't think there's any leadership.”

The leadership in question includes SBPD Chief Scott Ruszkowski, who is also the Democratic nominee for St. Joseph County sheriff. Asked by WSBT whether he would bring back the Metro Homicide Unit, Ruszkowski said no, and described SBPD helping Mishawaka and county police on cases when they ask. His Republican opponent, Rod Laureys, told WSBT his campaign's call to “reestablish a multi-agency drug and violent crime partnership” meant a countywide drug unit, not the homicide unit.

So the statistics Mueller presented to defend the current system are also the record of a department whose chief is asking voters for a countywide job on Nov. 3. That is exactly why those numbers ought to be laid out case by case, under the same definition the prosecutor used.

Bissell Street is still open

The debate flared after the triple homicide on Bissell Street in September. As of Oct. 9, nobody had been arrested, WNDU reported. City officials said at the Oct. 1 news conference that nine people had been killed in South Bend so far this year, two more than at the same point in 2025, WNDU reported then.

Keimisha Dillard's 22-year-old daughter, Geimisha Broadnax, was one of the three killed. “I need whoever … whatever you know to come forward and let the police know,” she told WNDU. Even people who don't want to talk to police, she said, should tell someone who will, “so that my baby deserves justice.”

For context, the prosecutor's office says the Metro unit solved 288 of the 365 homicides it investigated countywide from 2003 until it was dissolved in October 2021, a 79% rate it compares with a national average of 61% over the same period. It also notes the unit began to fracture in 2017, when South Bend cut the number of officers it contributed.

Nobody has to want the old unit back to want the real count. The city has the case list behind the 88 and the 80. Releasing them, with the definition of “cleared” attached, would settle in an afternoon what a week of dueling press releases hasn't.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.