[eerie music]
[streetcar clattering on track]
DET.
JOE JEFFERSON: Homicide here in New Orleans
is not for everybody.
You have your cases where everything's firing on all
cylinders.
Or you have cases where you can come up with nothing.
We're dealing with years and years
of just high murder rates.
DET.
ROB BARRERE: Some cases are very hard, from the beginning,
to solve.
It gets very daunting.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Probably going on at least 100 murders a year.
And seeing a lot of tragedy, a lot of carnage.
It's the open cases, the ones you don't solve,
that you think about.
You think about those years after they're gone.
[music swells]
[police radio chatter]
[motor running]
Nobody saw anything?
Nobody probably heard anything.
They heard shots.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Any cameras?
Poor guy.
[ambient music]
NARRATOR: The victim is 31-year-old Jonathan Dotson,
born and raised in New Orleans.
He grew up in a tight-knit family.
He was a husband, and father to a young son.
He tore his door down, definitely, to escape.
Kicked it in?
DETECTIVE: Yep.
Then he kept banging at it.
There's holes all in here.
There's holes all in the studs.
So my first casings are, like, where you got one,
is where the shooting starts.
So they chased my victim.
He came in over here, and was trying to get away.
And that's as far as he got.
He's laying in a prone position.
He's got bullet holes in his back
as he was trying to escape.
NARRATOR: Jonathan was shot over 15 times.
Taking it one step at a time.
DET.
ROB BARRERE: I think people just think sometimes that we're just
these guys in shirts and ties, just writing a bunch
of nonsense in a notebook.
But it's more than that.
having to go tell a mother, hey, you
know, sorry to tell you this, but you know, we found
your son, it-- it affects us.
[somber music]
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: We're going to meet with some of the family
members of my victim.
We may learn something more after talking
to them about his activities.
How are y'all?
WOMAN: Fine. DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Y'all want to go inside?
WOMAN: Yeah.
[minimal music playing]
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: He was shot at about 2:03.
EMS came within minutes of that.
And he had already passed.
It was too late.
WOMAN: Oh, God.
What I have to do now is figure out who did this.
What we find sometimes is the guys
who did it are either going to brag about it,
and word will start getting out.
It could be a week from now that somebody
is going to come to you and go, this is what I'm hearing.
[inaudible] DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Tell them to call me.
But I know how it is.
People don't like the police sometimes.
And it doesn't hurt my feelings, believe me.
But we got to get whatever you get
back to me, whether they want to do it or you want to do it.
Yeah.
[eerie music]
There's many reasons why people don't like to come forward.
Fear is one big avenue.
Distrust-- historically some people
have this deep seated distrust for the police.
DET.
JOE JEFFERSON: On a professional level, highly frustrating.
On a personal level, as just a-- a dude from New Orleans, yeah,
I mean, I understand.
It frustrates us, and it frustrates
the community as a whole.
Because they don't understand why some cases get
solved and other cases don't.
[AMBIENT MUSIC OVER DRUM
MACHINE]
NARRATOR: Over the next few days--
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: [inaudible] who killed my boy the other day,
right here on the corner.
You don't know who--
NARRATOR: --Bender hits the streets,
trying to drum up leads.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Nobody's saying anything?
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: A lot of times, I'll
talk to somebody who's adamant.
They're not talking to the police.
But if you talk to them long enough,
you might be able to break that barrier.
I don't know if you want this, but it's
got my cell phone number on it.
I'll find out what happened out there, Brian.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Thank you, bro.
[car door shuts]
[exhales sharply]
I got nothing.
NARRATOR: Three days after the murder, and with no new leads--
[phone rings]
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Hello, this is Detective Bender.
What happened?
NARRATOR: --Bender's outreach may have finally paid off.
Do you know what color SUV it was?
It was light-colored.
I got an anonymous phone call from someone who lives
in the area, says that the possible getaway
vehicle was parked at the 1100 block of Congress Street.
And there's a pharmacy at that corner
that has exterior surveillance.
So we're going to go down there, see
if there's anything on there that
will help us with the case.
All right, so this is where the car was supposed
to be parked, in this block.
And this is the pharmacy on the corner.
Go find out if there's anything in there.
[car door shuts]
[door opens]
[sighs]
It sucks, man.
NARRATOR: The pharmacy's surveillance
system is not working.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: That's about it, then.
Now I got nothing.
Not every homicide gets solved.
The ones you don't solve usually live with your loved ones
you did solve.
Because you always question, what did I miss?
What could I have done different?
But you hope that somewhere down the road,
you're going to solve it.
NARRATOR: After weeks with no progress--
[knocking on door]
--Bender returns to visit with Jonathan's family.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: What's going on?
Thanks for coming.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Yes, ma'am.
So who caught all the fish?
The family is trying to raise money
for the burial, and funeral services, and everything.
WOMAN: What would you like? DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: One of each.
WOMAN: One of each, OK. DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: So what they're doing
is they're selling home-cooked plate lunches out of the house.
So we're here to do our part-- my part-- of helping them out.
This senseless killing has to stop.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: Unfortunately, in this city,
it's way too common.
I got to the point that I stopped watching the news.
Because every time you watch the news, it's a murder.
It's the same--
same thing--
And it's people that you knew.
And it's time that we all come together
as one in our communities.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: The family, you know, is good people.
I'm sure if they get something from one of the victim's
friends, or-- or they hear something,
they're going to let us know.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Right. DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: So we're just going to keep working it.
All right, we're going to get out of y'all's hair.
Thank y'all.
If y'all need something, call me.
Somebody saw something.
Somebody knew something.
They're doing what they can.
We're doing what we can.
And hopefully we come to a--
a good conclusion, identify who did this.
[ambient music]
DET.
ROB BARRERE: If we don't have trust between us
and the people we serve, we have nothing.
You did the right thing. DET.
ROB BARRERE: So I hope, you know,
we can get to a level of trust and mutual respect
to where homicides are solved easier.
POLICE OFFICER: We're asking anybody in the community,
if they have information, bring that to our homicide unit.
DET.
JOE JEFFERSON: It's wrong that the murder rate in New Orleans
is what it is.
And in order to stop it, it's going to take
everybody working together.
DET.
TIMOTHY BENDER: And that won't happen
until they know Detective Tim, or they know Detective Whoever.
You get anything, y'all can call me.
I mean, everybody's gotta cooperate.
It's a Team effort with a capital T.