It is semantics. Semantic issues are not necessarily (or even very commonly) unimportant ones. What I am suggesting, however, is that the guy was being either an idiot or an asshole to expect an agitated citizen to be automatically sensitive to a technical linguistic distinction normally only of importance within the law enforcement professions.
And “a few units”? I should be so lucky! I had one detective constable come round (the next day IIRC).
To be fair though, they did actually catch the culprits (though I think more because of other crimes they had committed than through investigation of mine, and I do not know if they actually got convicted of anything), and I did get back the most valuable of the stolen items.
In the UK, I think that breaking and entering without theft would not be burglary, but some lesser crime like criminal damage and trespass. Burglary, by definition, assumes theft. If you break in and assault someone, then that would probably be aggravated trespass and possibly grievous or actual bodily harm.
Any idea why that was? I’m curious because my hometown’s police report used to include people charged with “nighttime burglary”. I always wondered why that would be different from burglary committed during the day.
This definition confused me so I had to look it up. Wikipedia says that trespass is an element of burglary, which makes far more sense to me. Entering a drug dealer’s home is not burglary, but the drug dealer is potentially guilty of burglary if he breaks into an abandoned building to deal drugs out of.
I was mugged while hitchhiking back in the early seventies. The guy was caught, he was charged with (I’m going by memory) 2 felony assaults,3 felony batterys, and 2 felony charges for robbery (I’m not sure about the word “robbery”, I think they used a different term).