Violent Crime

The FBI's top priorities are national security threats, but the Bureau also continues to play a key role in combating violent crime in big cities and local communities across the United States.  The FBI concentrates on crime problems that pose major threats to American society. Significant violent crime incidents such as bank robberies, sniper murders, and serial killings can paralyze entire communities and stretch state and local law enforcement resources to their limits. 

The FBI has had a primary role in bank robbery investigations since the 1930s, when John Dillinger and his gang were robbing banks and capturing the public’s imagination. In 1934, it became a federal crime to rob any national bank or state member bank of the Federal Reserve System. The law soon expanded to include bank burglary, larceny, and similar crimes, with jurisdiction delegated to the FBI. Today the Bureau, while continuing to provide assistance to state and local partners investigating bank robberies, focuses its investigative resources on those suspects who post the greatest safety threats to the public, including the most violent and/or the most prolific serial offenders who often cross jurisdictional boundaries.

With some 33,000 violent street gangs, motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs criminally active in the U.S. today, there is an ever continuous threat posed by gang violence.  Many are sophisticated and well organized; all use violence to control neighborhoods and boost their illegal money-making activities, which include robbery, drug and gun trafficking, prostitution and human trafficking, and fraud. Many gang members continue to commit crimes even after being sent to jail.