Discussion: In the first required reading “Crime in the United States, 2018 – Violent Crime”, the FBI includes four general offense types grouped together as part of its Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Program to collect data that it classified overall as violent crime. Also included in the readings are FBI summaries of each of those four offense types that include the general elements of the offense as well as some statistics regarding those offenses.
For your initial discussions post:
(1) pick ONE (1) of those four offenses and generally describe the elements of the offense;
(2) describe what you believe your biggest challenge as an investigator would be proving all of those elements of the offense; and
(3) identify AT LEAST ONE investigative tool or technique that you think would be critical to solving that case and explain why it is important.
For example, of you pick murder as your topic, you will need to explain what the general elements of that offense are and then identify what you which element you think is the biggest challenge to prove (is it the willful intent, showing how the crime occurred in the case of a found body with no witnesses, etc), and then identify an investigative technique or service that will be critical (is it polygraphs, ballistic evidence, interviewing, crime scene management, etc).
