District Attorney John T. Adams announced that the County had eighteen (18) homicides in 2021. Of those eighteen (18) homicides, three (3) were murder/suicides and one (1) was ruled a justified homicide by the District Attorney.
Of the other fourteen (14) homicides that occurred, arrested were made in eleven (11) of those homicides. only three (3) homicides remain unsolved, to date. This clearance rate of 79% is excellent and is a testament to the hard work of Berks County law enforcement and the District Attorney’s office to bring the perpetrators of this violence to justice.
Twelve (12) of the eighteen (18) homicides occurred in the City of Reading. Of those twelve (12) homicides, nine (9) had been cleared by arrests, one (1) was ruled justified by the District Attorney and two (2) remain under investigation. This clearance rate of 83% by the City police is excellent.
District Attorney John T. Adams applauded the hard work and diligence of the Reading Police Department and specifically the Criminal Investigation Unit for these excellent outcomes.
District Attorney John T. Adams stated that, “One homicide is one too many, but the number of homicides that we had last year is similar to neighboring counties. Lancaster County had fourteen (14) homicides, Dauphin County had twenty-one (21) homicides and York County had nineteen (19) homicides in 2021.”
