Winston-Salem Police Launch Digital Campaign To Solve Homicides

The Winston-Salem Police Department is using a new tool to reduce the number of unsolved murders for 2014.

The Internet advertising and social media campaign will steer users to a nine and a half minute video posted on YouTube that focuses on four specific cases.

The city's marketing and communications department helped produce the piece, which was taped at locations where the victims were found.  Director Ed McNeal says they're targeting selected areas. 

“All of these homicides happened inside two zip codes-27101 and 27105," says McNeal.

He says the city is working with a partner called Media Placement Services to identify a profile in these areas.

"Young people ages 18 to 24 in some instances, 18 to 30 in others, and what we are doing is taking a promotional clip of the video and that will appear inside their Facebook and it will show up a s a preview before items that they have searched for on YouTube,” says McNeal.

In 2014, there were 15 homicides in Winston-Salem.  Police are still looking for new leads in the unsolved  killings of Delroy East on Jan.1, Christopher R. Thompson on March 23, Christopher D. Jones on March 28, and Tyrahn R. Elliott on April 17.

Winston-Salem Police Chief Barry Rountree says if the program is a success, it will be used to help investigators in other unsolved murder cases.

“Ten of the 15 homicides for 2014 have been solved, but we aren't satisfied with that. We want to solve all of them and bring closure to the families and the communities impacted by these homicides. So we are asking for community's support, we are asking for information from the community to assist us in this investigation,” says Rountree.

The digital campaign on unsolved homicides ends on March 29^th, but the YouTube video will remain posted.

Follow Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news