Gun violence got very bad during the pandemic.

This was true across the country, but this is how it sounded to Philadelphia Police Lieutenant Dennis Rosenbaum at the time.

My phone goes off all night long.

Triples, quadruples, quintuples, one after another, one after another.

He means triple shootings, quadruple shootings.

Michael Forrest saw firsthand the consequences of many of those shootings.

He's a funeral director in West Philly.

Emotionally, physically, the time, effort, dealing with the families, their emotions,

as they unpack their anger issues, the regrets, the guilt, and they all come and they put it in my lap.

In 2021, he told member station W. HYY that he tried not to fixate on everything he saw at his job.

I mean, I would have PTSD. I couldn't do it. You go home and you reset.

That year, 2021, Philadelphia would see 562 homicides, the worst year on record.

And as the homicide rate rose, the homicide clearance rate, which measures how many of these crimes are solved, fell.

Here's Ellie Rushing, a crime reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It dropped to a historic low of 41.8%.

So less than half of the city's murders were being solved.

But like most U.S. cities, Philadelphia turned a corner.

The homicides dropped a little, then a lot. Here's Mayor

Shirell Parker at her state of Philadelphia address last month. If these current trends continue,

you should know that Philadelphia will see the lowest numbers of homicides and shootings in

more than a half a century here in our city.

And while homicides are going down, the rate at which homicide investigations are solved

...