[EA-3167]

I was with you up until the very last line. Why do people imagine that the police are in the business of property retrieval? Once your stuff is stolen in almost all cases it's long LONG gone! Cars are sent to be broken down for parts, tools are sold to fences and so on. The typical thief isn't some mastermind who carefully holds on to what they stole, they rush to their nearest fence or dealer to trade it for what they need.

Police are there to report a crime and add that to area stats, and if the issue is more than a lone junkie then it eventually gets to a detective in whatever the local version of Robbery is.

"They didn't get my stuff back" isn't a realistic criticism, and it detracts from the many other points that are.

[Zigurd]

With a few exceptions, like mob run baggage theft rings at big airports, criminals are not very smart and have pretty poor opsec. Solution rates could be a lot better than they are.

[EA-3167]

The sort of low-level thieves you're thinking off sold off their ill-gotten gains within a very short time for a fraction of their value, often in a direct trade for drugs. It would be very hard to justify the investment required to prevent that, track the route property takes through handoff networks, and recover it in a form the owner would accept. Given that society suffers from more serious crimes that's generally where effort goes, and that's the result of public demand.

People want to not pay a lot for police, they want them well trained and highly accountable, they want excellent 'customer service', and they want to defund the police all at the same time. Out of this incoherent mess of conflicting desires the compromise is to focus on crime prevention, fighting organized crimes, or crimes against people rather than property as the top priorities.

[quickthrowman]

This scene from The Big Lebowski is how all cops treat personal property theft cases (They got us working in shifts!): https://youtu.be/N0rOe59wKAc

Save your time and don’t get laughed at behind your back. By all means, report your stolen car but anything smaller than that is a waste of your time and the cops time since they do not care at all.