The cops don't do much about bike theft. The perpetrators are the homeless, and they're basically untouchable. They have no assets, they can't pay any fines, and it's too expensive to keep them in jail.
Edit to add: It would be nice if they at least recovered the bikes and returned them to their owners but it seems like if they can't collect fines or put someone in prison they aren't interested. It woudn't be hard. Go to the local homeless hangouts. Any bikes nicer than what you could buy at Walmart are stolen, and most of the other ones are too. Run the serial numbers against theft reports and load them out.