FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) --- With an 88% homicide clearance rate right now, the Fort Wayne Police Department is on track to beat the national average for the fifth year in a row. According to the latest Department of Justice statistics, the national average for homicide clearance rates sits at just 52%. So far, the city has seen 32 homicides, which is one less than the average of 33, although the number will fluctuate, said Detective Sgt. David Watkins, one of two homicide sergeants who leads a team of 11. Detective Sgt. Matthew Wilson put the homicide unit’s success down to changes made in 2019 that ended the “lone wolf” detective approach and brought in the team approach. “We debrief every single homicide we have and we hit it as a team. There’s a lot of work that goes into it, but I would say, if you had to pick something tangible, it’d have to be teamwork,” Wilson added. Another plus is the administration’s approval to build the team to ten detectives and, now, 11. “They provide us the tools that we need to effectively solve these crimes. Now we have more manpower,” Wilson said. But it doesn’t end there. “We also have our cell phone analysts now housed within our unit, so we’re able to take technology and instead of sending it out to the state for testing, we do it in-house,” along with a digital forensic unit. Now what may have taken months, only takes hours “to know what we should be looking at and what direction we should take,” Wilson noted. Homicide also depends on the Gang and Violent Crimes Unit for “pickups” because they know the players on the street. “They know the same players that we’re dealing with, or the associates,” Wilson said. “There’s no doubt they look for those and we want to pick these guys up before they commit these crimes whether it be possession of guns or narcotics.” Watkins said it is true that homicide is “seeing younger kids committing these homicides and also being the victims.”