Serious crimes or those that require in-depth investigations are routinely transferred from the road patrol deputy who took the original report, over to the detective who is assigned to the area of the county where the crime occurred.

While there are not enough detectives to investigate every crime reported, cases are “graded” according to their presumed solvability, and detectives are assigned to work the most serious cases, as well as those they are most likely to be able to solve (whether because of good suspect information, strong evidence, etc.)