To report bullying to the police, call 911 if you or someone else is in immediate danger, and otherwise call your local police department’s non-emergency line or go to the station in person with the evidence you’ve collected. Officers will decide whether the conduct meets the legal elements of a crime, so the report needs to describe specific acts, not a general complaint that someone has been mean or cruel. That distinction is what determines whether a criminal investigation opens.
When Bullying Is Actually a Crime
A lot of what people call bullying stays in the territory of rude or hurtful behavior that police can’t act on. Certain acts cross a clear legal line, and knowing which ones matter tells you whether a report will go anywhere.
- Assault and battery. Hitting, shoving, or making a credible physical threat is a crime in every state. Serious injury is not required.
- Criminal harassment. Repeated unwanted contact or threats that serve no legitimate purpose can be charged under state criminal codes. The exact elements vary by state, but the pattern of conduct is usually the key factor.
- Stalking. A pattern of behavior that causes someone to fear for their safety is illegal in all states. It also becomes a federal crime when it crosses state lines or uses electronic communications in interstate commerce, covering conduct that places someone in reasonable fear of death or serious injury, or causes substantial emotional distress.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2261A – Stalking
- Threats. Transmitting a threat to injure someone across state lines is a federal offense carrying up to five years in prison. Combined with intent to extort money or something else of value, the penalty rises to up to twenty years.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications
- Extortion and blackmail. Demanding money or favors by threatening to harm someone’s reputation, property, or person is a federal crime when the communication travels across state lines.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications
- Hate crimes. Bullying motivated by bias against someone’s race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability can be prosecuted under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The federal penalty is up to ten years in prison, or life if the crime results in death.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 249 – Hate Crime Acts
If what you’re dealing with fits one of these categories, police have a basis to act. If it doesn’t, the report still has value as a record, and civil remedies remain available.
Gather Evidence Before You Walk In
Officers evaluate reports on specifics. The more organized your documentation, the harder it is for the report to be brushed aside as vague or unsupported. Start collecting as soon as a pattern emerges, even if you haven’t decided to report yet.
Write down the date, time, and location of each incident. Note exactly what was said or done, who was involved, and who witnessed it. Save screenshots of text messages, social media posts, emails, and direct messages before the sender can delete them. Photograph any injuries and keep medical records. If property was damaged, photograph the damage and hold onto repair receipts.
Track the effects too: missed work or school, declining grades, anxiety, sleep problems, medical visits. If you already tried to resolve the situation through a school, employer, or the platform where the conduct happened, document those attempts and their outcomes. A record showing you raised the issue and nothing changed strengthens both a criminal complaint and any civil case that follows.
Pull together a list of witnesses with their contact information. Officers may want to talk to them, and having names and numbers ready shortens the process.
Making the Report
Call 911 if you’re facing immediate danger. For anything else, use your local police department’s non-emergency line, or go to the station in person. Bring your timeline, screenshots, photos, medical records, and witness list with you.
Be specific about what happened. “She sent me fourteen text messages in two days threatening to hurt me if I showed up at work” is actionable. “She’s been mean to me” probably isn’t. Describe conduct in the language of the crimes above: repeated contact, threats, physical acts, fear for your safety. The officer taking the report has to fit what you describe into legal elements, and doing part of that work for them makes a difference.
Ask for a copy of the police report, or at minimum the report number. You’ll need it if you later apply for a protective order or file a civil lawsuit, and it’s the paper trail that lets you show a pattern if the conduct continues.
If Police Decline to Take a Report
If an officer tells you the behavior doesn’t rise to a criminal level, ask them to document the contact anyway. Request to speak with a supervisor if needed. In many jurisdictions you have the right to file a report even when the officer doesn’t believe charges are warranted, and that record becomes valuable if the situation escalates. The pattern is often what turns individually minor incidents into a chargeable offense later on.
Cyberbullying and Reports That Cross State Lines
Online bullying complicates evidence and jurisdiction. Preserve everything first: screenshot messages, posts, comments, and profile pages, and note dates, timestamps, and usernames. Screen-record voice or video chats when you can. Blocking the sender limits further contact, but do it after you’ve captured the record, because blocking can make older messages harder to retrieve.
Platform reporting tools are worth using, but they don’t substitute for law enforcement. Federal law does not require platforms to remove bullying content. Section 230 of the Communications Act shields platforms from liability for user-posted content and gives them discretion to moderate as they choose.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 230 A platform can take content down, and most have policies against harassment, but it isn’t legally compelled to.
When cyberbullying involves threats of violence, sexually explicit images shared without consent, or a pattern of contact that constitutes stalking, it becomes a criminal matter. Report it to local police. If the person is in another state, the conduct may fall under the federal stalking or interstate threats statutes cited above, which reach electronic communications crossing state lines. The FBI’s local field office is an option in those cases, and local police can also refer the matter up.
Protective Orders and Civil Options
Criminal charges are one path. A civil protective order is another, and the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Most states grant protective orders based on harassment, stalking, or threats of violence, and the standard of proof is lower than in a criminal case. An attorney can tell you whether the conduct you’ve documented supports one in your state.
The same evidence that supports a police report supports a protective order application, which is another reason to build the file carefully from the start. If police decline to press charges, a protective order still gives you an enforceable court order the person can be arrested for violating.
If the Conduct Doesn’t Reach a Crime
Police handle criminal acts. Bullying that stays short of a crime is still addressable, just through different channels. Workplace bullying that targets a protected characteristic and becomes severe or pervasive can be reported to your employer’s HR department and, when it qualifies as unlawful harassment, to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.5U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Harassment School bullying tied to race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or religion falls under federal civil rights laws enforced by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.6StopBullying.gov. Federal Laws Those routes matter when the conduct is real but not criminal, and they can run in parallel with a police report when the same acts fit both.