San Jose's homicide unit sustained a 100% clearance rate for full years 2022–2024 and remained at 100% in 2025 to date, solving 35, 36, 29, and 18 homicides respectively. Detectives routinely work long hours and prioritize the critical 48-hour investigative window immediately after a killing. The unit emphasizes tenacity, dedication, and extensive follow-up rather than fixation on statistics. San Jose's relatively low annual homicide totals and some small-city characteristics help investigations, but the clearance rate still exceeds national averages. National homicide clearance averages are just over 50 percent, with nearby cities showing varied rates.
SAN JOSE Amanda Estantino routinely works long hours to get to the bottom of San Jose's most violent crimes. It isn't unheard of for her to go two days without heading home. We're tenacious like that, and we and everybody cares from the beginning, so we're not playing catch-up. So we're able to follow the lead, do the 48-hour investigation, she said, referring to the crucial investigative window immediately after a killing. Everybody wants to be here.
The homicide clearance rate is extraordinary for a city that hovers around 1 million residents. San Jose does have some not-so-big-city characteristics working in its favor, like a modest homicide frequency: The city has not tallied 50 killings in a single year in over three decades. Even then, San Jose's clearance rate still stands out among peer cities both in the Bay Area and across the country.
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