The couple of times I've interacted with them, it's been painfully obvious to me that they feel like they need to put on a performance for me, even if it's clear that it's an unsolvable crime. (In both cases, it was a property crime worth reporting, but also one with literally no evidence to follow up on.) I honestly wonder if some of the less well resourced people in my neighborhood even get a similar time of day from the police - my impression is that they probably don't.
If a cop is making $30/hr, and we allow "pennies" to be as much as $0.25, they would have to complete the entire dusting for fingerprints process in 30 seconds.
I had a break in. Thieves took my check books, and tried to cash one in at a payday loan place at a neighbouring city. The payday place called me, and of course, I told them not to.
I called my police department with additional information, and they told me to file a report in the neighbouring city instead... And of course, the other police department told me to file with my police department as the original crime did not take place in their city...
And oh, I also had airtags that were taken so I knew which building the thieves took my stuff to. But because it is a multi-tenant building, the police wouldn't do anything. I offered to trigger the sound to narrow it down, but they didn't allow that either... Eventually, the thieves found the airtags and threw them out.
Anyway, I contacted my representatives to give police more help to help in cases like mine, but crickets is what I heard back. Not even an acknowledgement.
The same thing works with stolen goods tracked via AirTags: the police will almost laugh in your face when you request their help with retrieving the gear, but if you call the police (not 911) and tell them you are about to confront the thief in a physical altercation, they’ll be there within five minutes.
You can imagine an alternative system where if someone steals your cat the government has to pay for that.
Called the cops. They responded by sending a helicopter over 15 minutes later. It shined it's spotlight around for a moment and then flew away.
"job well done" - LAPD probably.
Not exactly batman level detective work here, this case was cracked because it was handed to them on a silver platter.
