ABSTRACT
Facing a backlog of unsolved cases, agencies began to tackle the problem by forming cold case squads, or units. Leading the way were the MiamiDade Police Department, in Miami, Florida; the Metropolitan Police Department, in Washington, DC; and the Phoenix Police Department, in Phoenix, Arizona. (See Chapter 1, “Challenges and Checklist” for Detective Ed Reynolds’s work in the Phoenix Police Department’s Cold Case Unit, created in 1993.1)
In the early 1980s, the Miami-Dade Police Department (then called the Metro-Dade Police Department) put together an ad hoc squad composed of one sergeant and two detectives to review the unsolved murder of a 12-yearold girl. A«er the arrest and conviction of two individuals responsible for her murder, the team reviewed and closed several other unsolved homicides. According to the agency’s website, a Miami Herald reporter wrote a series of articles covering the cases and referred to the team as the “Cold Case Squad,” the name eventually adopted by the Homicide Bureau.2
