Initial Stages of an Investigation
Steve Hibbitt, Gary Shaw · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023
This chapter details the initial stages of a criminal investigation, which begins after the discovery of the crime. The first contact could be a report to a call handling unit, a public enquiry desk, or reports to officers or other staff or agencies. Many crimes can be quickly detected through prompt and decisive resourcing and dispatch for locating and arresting offenders, obtaining witnesses, seizing CCTV footage, finding and preserving forensic evidence, etc. Initial assessments by attending officers with updates reported back to communications and control rooms should confirm the initial grading or revise the response in terms of seriousness, priority, and resources. This period is often referred to as the ‘golden hour’ (or hours). A key point for investigators, no matter what the seriousness of the crime is, is the importance of establishing exactly what has already been done, by whom, and to what level and standard.