Pressing Battery Charges

Question

As I understand it: Battery is the act of intentionally touching or applying force to another person such that the person suffers harm or offense.

Q1: What is the correct verbiage to communicate to an enforcement office that you want to press assault charges against a suspect that has physically struck a victim? Assume you witnessed the battery.

Q2: What obligation do officers have once a victim has indicated they have been assaulted and the victim seeks to press charges?

Q3: Under what, if any, circumstances are officers required to arrest a battery suspect? Does an arrest require that the victim suffer visible physical injury?

Assume a Juris Diction of Florida / New York City

Answer 1

As I understand it: Battery is the act of intentionally touching or applying force to another person such that the person suffers harm or offense.

More or less.

Q1: What is the correct verbiage to communicate to an enforcement office that you want to press assault charges against a suspect that has physically struck a victim? Assume you witnessed the battery.

Normally called making a complaint or report.

Q2: What obligation do officers have once a victim has indicated they have been assaulted and the victim seeks to press charges?

They are required to record the complaint and use their discretion to decide if and how they will investigate.

Q3: Under what, if any, circumstances are officers required to arrest a battery suspect?

In general, they aren’t.

Police have wide discretion in which complaints to investigate and how to do so. In some jurisdictions there are some crimes which must be investigated by law - child abuse and domestic violence are the typical ones. Otherwise it is a matter of administrative policy, capability and resources as well as individual discretion.

Similar discretion exists around prosecution.

Does an arrest require that the victim suffer visible physical injury?

No

Answer 2

It isn't up to you to press charges. Watch any TV show involving criminal courts. The case is always read as

The People vs. Joe Badguy

Because a criminal charge isn't you vs. them, it's the entire society (Government acting for the people) vs. them. That decision gets made by a District Attorney based on a bunch of things, largely whether this person represents a future threat to the people.

This is how horribly abused women who murder their torturers often aren't prosecuted. It's not like they're going to hurt random citizens.

Anyway, you can't file a criminal charge against a fellow citizen.

However, you can certainly file a civil lawsuit against a fellow citizen. It only works for money damages, or to compel or restrain behavior (return stolen art, stay 500 feet away from me), or in rare cases you can reduce their gun rights. On the upside, the burden of proof is much lower here; you only need to prove 51% more likely than not. You get broad fact-finding powers, and can compel testimony from anyone (since the protections against self-incrimination don't apply to a civil matter, as it's not criminal).

It happens sometimes that the process of a civil suit uncovers evidence of a crime. This can be passed to the D.A. to see if he is interested in a parallel criminal prosecution. If the judge himself recommends this, that is rather likely to happen.