In cases ripped from the headlines, police investigate serious and often deadly crimes, weighing the evidence and questioning the suspects until someone is taken into custody. The district attorney's office then builds a case to convict the perpetrator by proving the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Working together, these expert teams navigate all sides of the complex criminal justice system to make New York a safer place.

Spike Fumo is an Italian kid apsiring to be a boxer. He falls in love with a rich girl, who turns out to be the daughter of a Mafia boss. Spike is threatened to leave Bensonhurst by the mob, and then goes to a poverty-stricken Puerto Rican part of Brooklyn.

Mourning the accidental death of his wife and having just moved to New York with his young son, laconic police psychologist Cal Jamison is reluctantly drawn into a series of grisly, ritualistic murders involving the immolation of two youths.