Nice Little Bit of Copspeak

[Rick H Kennerly]

|o| Not copspeak.  Just an example of bureaucratese that happened to be
|o| describing an incident in the jurisdiction of the police department.

Actually, home invasion is a category of reportable crime on the FBI's UCR,
uniform crime report.  This report is made by all jurisdiction to the FBI on
a regular basis so that the Department of Justice can track crime.  From
time to time crimes are added or redefined, depending on what the feds want
to track (hate crimes were added recently).  These are not legal definitions
but working definitions for classification and tracking purposes used to
smooth the various legal definitions used across the country.

A home invasion is a crime committed by outsiders forcibly entering a home
while someone is in the residence.  There are subcategories such as Home
Invasion: murder, Home Invasion: robbery, Home Invasion: assault.  This is
to differentiate between murders committed by someone invited into or living
in the house and those done by outsiders forcing their way in, for instance.

There is no Home Invasion: burglary, however, since burglary implies (in a
legal sense) no victim present.  If the victim is present, it's a robbery.

rhk