Charlotte recorded fewer homicides in 2011 than any year in more than two decades as violent crime continued to decline in the city and across the nation.

Last year's 55 homicides represent the lowest number since 1988, when Charlotte-Mecklenburg police investigated 45.

Police have also solved nearly 89 percent of their cases, a clearance rate that well outpaces the national average of about 65 percent. A case is cleared when police arrest a suspect or determine that the suspect has died. The total reflects crimes reported through late Saturday.

In an interview Saturday night, CMPD Chief Rodney Monroe said homicides have declined in part because of the intense focus the department brings to the initial hours of death investigations. As many as a dozen investigators - from homicide, gang, assault and vice units - show up at crime scenes to talk to witnesses and share information. Monroe said he's been to the scene of about 35 of this year's homicides.

"When we're locking up suspects in homicide cases inside of 48 or 72 hours, people take notice of that. The good guys and the bad guys take notice of that. Our (homicide detectives) are working 24-36 hours straight. Cases aren't going cold."

Still, six of last year's cases remain unsolved, including the slaying of Justin Jeeter, 29, who was shot after he answered his West Charlotte front door in August.

Jeeter's mother, Linda Walton, said she spent most of the past holiday week crying and consoling her son's children.

"I have good days and bad days, and the holidays have mostly been bad days," she said. "Some days I ask myself why they can't find the person that killed my son. What's the reason why? What's taking so long? I feel in my heart that they'll find somebody. I just want it to be now."

Monroe said the drop in homicides allows detectives to focus more intensively on unsolved cases like Jeeter's.

The killings struck a cross-section of the city. The youngest victim was 4-month-old Canell Jeremiah Durant, who was found dead in an apartment complex in northwest Charlotte. Investigators said the baby may have died of shaken baby syndrome. His father was charged with murder.

The oldest - 64-year-old Robert Latimer Barber - was shot to death during an apparent robbery as he walked home from a Caribou Coffee shop in south Charlotte.

The killings included a woman stabbed in the neck with a beer bottle after an uptown bar fight, and a 4-year-old girl pulled out from under her bed and stabbed to death by the men who'd shot her parents moments before. Two people were reportedly killed over card games.

A troubling trend continued in 2011 - African-Americans, especially young black males, made up a disproportionately large number of homicide victims. Blacks make up 35 percent of the city of Charlotte, but accounted for 58 percent of homicide victims.

Eleven Hispanics and 12 whites were killed.

Joel Ford, a spokesperson for the Charlotte-based Men Who Care Global, a group that tries to mentor young black men, said the city should pursue the prevention of violence among black youths with the same zeal it used to land the Democratic National Convention.

"It's become commonplace that you see these homicides as a regular occurrence and, unless it's on your front door, that's somebody else's problem. We have to get to the point where it's my problem because this is the city I live in," he said.

Among the trends:

Eight homicide victims were teens or children, down from last year when there were 11.

Police say the overwhelming majority of homicides were instances where the victim and the suspect knew each other. Most - at least 22 - happened because of an argument. Sixteen occurred because of a robbery, including seven that were related to drugs. Three homicides were gang-related.

According to the Domestic Violence Action Committee, at least four homicides were the result of intimate partner violence. That's the lowest number of intimate partner homicides in a decade, said Mike Sexton, a spokesman for the Mecklenburg County Women's Commission. Sexton still encouraged the community to take the low number in context, noting studies that show one in four women have been in an abusive relationship.

"There's still a multitude of people that are dealing with abuse behind closed doors in their homes, that we never hear from," Sexton said.

High clearance rate

The police department's clearance rate matched last year's rate and reflects several factors. The biggest one: in Charlotte, most victims knew the people who killed them.

Paul Friday, a criminologist at UNC Charlotte, said police have successfully combated gang violence and robberies, which has contributed to a decline in random homicides. "If you were to look at the murders for robberies or the murders associated with gangs, they're much harder to clear than killings associated with some type of relationship."

Officers have increased efforts to get witnesses to step forward. In 2011, the Crime Stoppers program paid out a record $34,360 to tipsters, resulting in roughly 225 arrests.

National trend

Authorities say reductions in violent crime have been seen across the nation for more than a decade. Between 1991 and 2010, the nation's murder rate dropped by 51 percent, according to the FBI. Nationally, the rate of violent crime has dropped by more than 13 percent over the last decade.

Crime in Charlotte has also dropped significantly, according to police statistics. In 2010, police say the city had the lowest crime rate since the department was formed in 1993.

Police and criminologists have cited several reasons for decreasing crime, including better police tactics and the absence of a new drug such as crack that brought violent turf wars in the 1990s.

Monroe says his department's units focusing on gangs and serious assaults have helped bring down crime. Better crime mapping and analysis also allows officers to spot trends early and respond, he says. And more levels of officers are now held accountable for their response to such trends.

The city places a priority on crime, as reflected in the budget - 43 percent or roughly $86.6 million goes to the police department, according to Patrick Cannon, chair of the community safety committee.

"I think the department is doing an extraordinary job operating within its budgetary means to make things like this happen," Cannon said.