Crimes
Learn how common crimes develop, which warning signs matter, what records can clarify what happened, and when police, medical care, an attorney, or another professional should take over.
Rape
Rape and sexual assault involve sexual activity without freely given consent, including when force, threats, coercion, incapacitation, or inability to consent is involved.
Arson
Arson is a fire intentionally started through criminal conduct, which investigators distinguish from an accidental or negligent fire by examining origin, cause, access, timing, and motive.
Drugs
Drug-related crime can involve unlawful possession, sales, manufacturing, trafficking, overdose danger, exploitation, weapons, or recurring activity that creates risk at a home, business, or public location.
Fraud
Fraud uses a lie, concealed fact, false identity, forged record, or deceptive promise to obtain money, property, services, identity information, or access.
Theft
Theft is the unlawful taking or keeping of property that belongs to someone else, while the exact offense depends on what was taken, how it was obtained, and the applicable law.
Murder
Murder is an unlawful, nonnegligent killing; homicide is the broader category and can also include killings classified as negligent, justifiable, or otherwise not murder.
Assault
Assault can involve an unlawful attack, attempted attack, or threat of immediate harm, while the line between assault, battery, and aggravated assault varies by jurisdiction.
Robbery
Robbery is taking or attempting to take property from a person through force, threat, intimidation, or fear, making it both a property crime and a violent crime.
Burglary
Burglary involves unlawful entry into a structure with intent to commit a crime inside; forced entry and an actual theft are not always required.
Stalking
Stalking is a course of unwanted conduct involving surveillance, contact, threats, intrusion, or interference that causes fear, substantial distress, or another harm defined by law.
Squatting
Squatting describes unauthorized occupancy of property, but whether the situation is criminal trespass, fraud, a tenancy dispute, or another civil possession issue depends on how entry and occupancy began.
Vandalism
Vandalism is intentional damage, destruction, defacement, or tampering involving property that belongs to someone else or is under another person's control.
Cybercrime
Cybercrime uses a computer, phone, account, network, digital identity, or online platform as the target, evidence source, or tool of a crime.
Harassment
Harassment is a broad label for unwanted conduct that threatens, intimidates, pressures, humiliates, or repeatedly intrudes on someone, while the legal definition depends on the conduct and jurisdiction.
Kidnapping
Kidnapping or abduction involves unlawfully taking, holding, moving, hiding, or restraining a person through force, threat, deception, or another prohibited means.
Trespassing
Trespassing involves unlawfully entering or remaining on land, in a dwelling, or on other real property without the permission or legal authority required by local law.
Illegal Weapons
Illegal-weapons cases can involve prohibited possession, unlawful transfer, trafficking, stolen firearms, illegal modification, unsafe criminal use, or a weapon connected to threats and other crimes.
Missing Persons
A missing-person case begins when someone's location or safety is unknown and the absence is unexplained, out of character, or connected to medical, criminal, exploitation, or other risk.
Human Trafficking
Human trafficking exploits a person for compelled labor, services, or commercial sex through force, fraud, or coercion; federal law does not require those means when a minor is exploited for commercial sex.