Last year, we wrote an article regarding crime terminology; and we feel that we need to revisit this topic, as the way you report a crime, is how the security provider/Police respond.
Firstly, crime is split up into two brackets; contact related crime, and property related crime.
1. Contact related crime/crimes against a person: where a person or people are injured/harmed or threatened with injury/harm during the commission of a crime.
2. Property related crime/crimes against a property: crime that occurs in the absence of a victim or where the victim is unaware of the crime at the time (i.e. where no person is directly or immediately harmed or threatened during the commission of a crime)
Crime is divided into these two categories as per the table below:
CONTACT RELATED CRIME
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PROPERTY RELATED CRIME
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Residential robbery
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Residential burglary
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Business robbery
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Business burglary
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Murder
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Theft of motor vehicle
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Assault
|
Theft out of motor vehicle
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Rape/sexual assault
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Theft from motor vehicle
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Common robbery
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Malicious Damage to Property
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Robbery with a firearm
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Theft General
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Robbery with instrument other than a firearm
|
As you can see from the above table, should you report that you have just been robbed; authorities will immediately presume a victim has been harmed, and the suspects potentially armed.
In most cases of contact related crime, the victim will remember the identity of the suspect and will probably be able to identify the suspect should an arrest be made.
Contact related crimes are also generally reported very soon after the event, meaning that the suspects could still be in the vicinity. Property related crimes happen without the victim knowing, and therefore are most likely to have a bigger time frame that the crime occurred.
Please use the correct words when reporting a crime; resources are dispatched according to the specification the resident relays.