A crime CAN be committed whether someone is charge, found guilty, acquitted, etc.
But the crime is only asserted/alleged/accused to have happened. And if the State doesn't want to acknowledge the crime via prosecution, it's not truly accurate to say that the crime happened.
I'm amazed you guys are resisting this. This is a basic principle you use when decrying the BLM protesters' standing:
BLM: That cop murdered our guy!
Cops: Here's cam footage, we aren't charging the police officers involved because of XYZ in the video.
BLM: [Rending of garments and gnashing of teeth] They murdered him and are now covering it up!
Cops: Sheesh. You guys suck.
Yeah, there's nuance to both sides of this argument we're having. But this notion of the State needing to subscribe to investigation and prosecution for a crime to have been committed is an incontestable point of corruption.
Now, we can bring in other types of crimes. Rape, murder... there's clearly a victim in the aftermath, even if no suspect is apprehended. But (one hopes at least) the State makes an investigatory effort in those situations. But let's get a little more granular. Let's take a murder for example.
There's a corpse in an alley. Blunt trauma to the head. No witnesses, no suspects, no leads. The victim has a life insurance policy and a beneficiary. The insurance company pays the beneficiary after the report is filed with cause of death.
But the SPECIFIC crime? Was he clubbed with a pipe? Kicked? Did he accidentally fall off the balcony of an apartment 5 floors above? Was he chasing a car down the alley, on foot, and the driver backed up and ran him over? Or any of a hundred other ways he could die? Murder 1? Murder 2? Manslaughter? Was he attacking someone else and he was a legit homicide in self defense? Was he a victim of the beneficiary of his insurance policy?
In our legal landscape, I don't think "murder" is officially a crime. A charge isn't filed until the specific scope is determined. There are people here in our forum that can clarify that.
But a corpse doesn't always mean that a murder was committed.
Let's consider the Jussie Smollett situation. He said he was attacked (assault and battery) by several white guys wearing Trump hats. Did the crime happen? Nope.
Or let's consider a rape accusation. Many of us here support the notion that a false accusation of rape is a crime of its own and a woman should go to jail for it. Do we want to go down the road that the rape incontestably did indeed happen, despite no conviction?
There's a lot of danger in accepting that every report is a crime. And there's a lot of danger in letting the State be the sole arbiter of electing to pursue criminal prosecution. Yeah, there's protection in the form of the Grand Jury where the State has to prove merit to its claims to bring charges... but there's no protection for a crime victim where the State elects not to pursue investigation/prosecution.
I don't have answers to this, I'm just pointing out that the flaws exist and that this is a power that the State has that many don't even consider in their calculus.