Five years of city reports show burglary clearance rates generally remained near or below 10%.
A burglary can leave a resident with two immediate questions: Will the stolen property be recovered, and will police identify the person responsible?
Seagoville Police Department statistics show that relatively few reported burglaries were cleared during several recent reporting periods.
Through October 2024, Seagoville recorded 47 burglaries and five cleared cases. That produced a clearance rate of 10.64%, according to the police chief’s monthly report presented to the Seagoville City Council on Nov. 18, 2024.
During the same period in 2023, the city recorded 44 burglaries and four clearances, for a 9.09% clearance rate.
The numbers mean burglaries increased by three cases through October 2024 while police recorded one additional clearance.
October alone brought seven reported burglaries. None was cleared during the month.
What Does “Cleared” Mean?
A clearance does not necessarily mean stolen property was recovered, a suspect was convicted, or a burglary reported during that particular month was solved immediately.
Under federal crime-reporting standards, an offense generally can be cleared in one of two ways: through an arrest or by “exceptional means.”
An exceptional clearance may occur when police identify an offender and gather enough evidence to support prosecution but cannot make an arrest because of circumstances outside the department’s control.
Examples can include the death of a suspect, denial of extradition, or a victim declining to cooperate after an offender has been identified.
Recovering stolen property by itself does not clear a burglary.
The Seagoville report lists five burglary clearances through October 2024, but it does not say how many resulted in arrests, how many were cleared exceptionally, or whether any stolen property was recovered. It also does not identify which reported burglaries were cleared.
That distinction matters because annual or year-to-date clearance rates compare the number of offenses cleared during a period with the number reported during that period.
A case cleared in 2024 could have been reported earlier, while a burglary reported in 2024 could be cleared during a later year.
The 10.64% figure should therefore be understood as a department-wide statistical measure—not as a prediction that an individual burglary victim has precisely a 10.64% chance of seeing a case solved.
Clearance Rates Across Several Years
Available Seagoville police reports show burglary clearance rates remained low during several different reporting periods.
| Reporting period | Burglaries reported | Cases cleared | Clearance rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| January–October 2024 | 47 | 5 | 10.64% |
| January–October 2023 | 44 | 4 | 9.09% |
| January–June 2021 | 24 | 2 | 8.33% |
| January–June 2020 | 22 | 2 | 9.09% |
| January–June 2019 | 37 | 1 | 2.70% |
Because the older figures cover six months while the two latest figures cover 10 months, the raw burglary totals should not be compared directly across every row. The clearance percentages, however, show the same general difficulty: only a small share of reported burglaries was cleared during each period.
The strongest result among the reporting periods examined was the 10.64% rate through October 2024. The lowest was 2.70% through June 2019, when one of 37 burglaries was cleared.
Across all five reporting periods, Seagoville recorded 174 burglaries and 14 clearances. That combined figure is useful as historical context, but it is not an official multi-year clearance rate because the periods are not uniform and individual cases may be reported and cleared in different reporting windows.
Reports Do Not Show What Happened in Each Case
The city’s monthly crime summaries reveal how many burglaries were reported and cleared, but they do not provide case-level outcomes.
Residents cannot determine from the published tables how many investigations produced identifiable suspects, fingerprints, surveillance footage or recoverable property. The reports also do not show how many burglaries involved homes, businesses, garages, sheds, or other structures.
Seagoville reports the broader category as “burglary-breaking or entering.” It should not be assumed that all 47 offenses recorded through October 2024 were residential burglaries.
The department’s overall criminal-investigation figures provide additional context, although they cover all types of cases rather than burglaries alone.
Through October 2024, criminal investigators received 1,198 cases, including 253 cases cleared by arrest, 53 handled through exceptional means, and 379 suspended because there were no leads.
Those department-wide figures demonstrate what can happen after an initial report: a case may lead to an arrest, qualify for an exceptional clearance, be closed for another reason, or become suspended when investigators have no actionable leads.
For burglary victims, the published statistics provide the broad outcome but not the individual story. Seagoville’s reports show that dozens of burglaries were documented each year while only a limited number were officially cleared.
They do not reveal whether the primary obstacle was a lack of witnesses, unavailable surveillance video, unidentified fingerprints, delayed reporting, insufficient evidence, or another investigative problem.
That missing detail is the difference between knowing Seagoville’s burglary clearance rate and understanding why so many cases remain uncleared.
