Guides
Plain-English guides to 19 crimes, including how each crime develops, warning signs, evidence that matters, and what usually happens after a report.
Rape Guide
Rape is sexual penetration without consent. Sexual assault is a broader term that can include other sexual contact without consent. The central question is not whether two people knew each other, dated, drank alcohol, or had consensual contact before. It is whether the sexual activity at issue was freely agreed to by a person who had the capacity to consent.
Arson Guide
Arson is the intentional burning of property through criminal conduct. A suspicious fire is not automatically arson. Fire investigators first determine where the fire began and how it started, then evaluate whether the cause was accidental, natural, undetermined, or incendiary.
Drugs Guide
Drug-related crime can involve unlawful possession, manufacturing, sales, trafficking, theft, violence, exploitation, or recurring activity that makes a location unsafe. Substance use, addiction, and unusual behavior are not by themselves proof of drug dealing. The useful evidence connects specific acts, people, places, items, and repeated timing.
Fraud Guide
Fraud uses a material lie, concealed fact, false identity, forged record, or deceptive promise to obtain money, property, services, identity information, or access. The first response has two goals: stop additional loss and preserve the communication, account, and payment trail before it disappears.
Theft Guide
Theft is taking, keeping, or exercising unauthorized control over property that belongs to someone else. The exact offense can depend on value, type of property, method, relationship, and local law. A strong theft record proves ownership, establishes when and how the item disappeared, and follows the item after the taking.
Murder Guide
Homicide means one person caused the death of another. Murder is a narrower legal category involving an unlawful killing with the state of mind required by the applicable law. Investigators determine what happened by joining medical findings, scene evidence, relationships, movements, communications, and conduct into a tested timeline.
Assault Guide
Assault generally involves an unlawful attack, attempted attack, or immediate threat of harm. State laws divide and name these offenses differently, so the evidence should document what the person did, what weapon or force was used, what injuries resulted, and what happened before and after the confrontation.
Robbery Guide
Robbery is taking or attempting to take property directly from a person through force, threat, intimidation, or fear. That makes it both a property crime and a violent crime. The strongest evidence usually connects the encounter, the person responsible, and the stolen property through a single timeline.
Burglary Guide
Burglary generally involves unlawful entry into a building or other covered structure with intent to commit a crime inside. Forced entry is not always required, and the intended crime does not have to be completed. The investigation connects access, intent, identity, and anything taken or damaged.
Stalking Guide
Stalking is a pattern of unwanted behavior directed at a specific person that causes fear or serious concern for safety. The individual acts may look minor when separated. The pattern becomes clear when contact, surveillance, appearances, threats, gifts, account access, impersonation, and third-party behavior are placed on one timeline.
Squatting Guide
“Squatting” is a popular label, not one uniform legal category. A case may involve trespass, unauthorized occupancy, a fraudulent lease, a tenant who stopped paying, a guest who refuses to leave, identity fraud, or a person who was deceived by someone pretending to be the owner. The correct response depends on how possession began and what rights are claimed.
Vandalism Guide
Vandalism is intentional damage, defacement, or destruction of property. A single event may be opportunistic. Repeated damage can reveal targeting, access, escalation, or connection to harassment, trespassing, burglary, or another crime. Good documentation preserves both the physical loss and the pattern.
Cybercrime Guide
Cybercrime includes criminal access, fraud, extortion, data theft, ransomware, impersonation, stalking, harassment, sabotage, and other offenses carried out through computers, accounts, networks, or connected devices. A responsible response separates three questions: what changed, whether unauthorized access occurred, and what evidence can identify the method and impact.
Harassment Guide
Harassment is repeated or serious unwanted conduct that threatens, intimidates, pressures, humiliates, or intrudes on another person. Not every rude message or personal conflict is criminal harassment. The useful question is what happened, how often, through which channels, what the sender knew, and whether the conduct created fear, disruption, or a credible threat.
Kidnapping Guide
Kidnapping or abduction involves unlawfully taking, moving, confining, hiding, or holding a person through force, threats, deception, or another prohibited means. It does not require a ransom demand, a stranger, or movement across state lines. When an abduction may be occurring, time and location information should reach police immediately.
Trespassing Guide
Trespassing generally means entering or remaining on property without the permission or legal authority required by local law. The strongest record identifies the boundary, the person, the lack or withdrawal of permission, the entry or refusal to leave, and the history that explains why the conduct was not a mistake.
Illegal Weapons Guide
An illegal-weapons case may involve a prohibited person, stolen firearm, unlawful transfer, trafficking, prohibited modification, unlawful possession in a restricted place, or a weapon used in another crime. Appearance alone rarely answers whether a weapon is legal. The decisive facts are the item, possessor, transfer, location, conduct, and law that applies.
Missing Persons Guide
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. There is no universal 24-hour waiting rule. When the circumstances are dangerous or unusual, report promptly and begin with the last independently confirmed point in time.
Human Trafficking Guide
Human trafficking is exploitation of a person for compelled labor, services, or commercial sex. It does not require crossing a border, physical restraint, or a stranger abduction. Traffickers often create control through money, housing, relationships, threats, documents, debt, isolation, addiction, or abuse of a person's immigration or family situation.