Sounds like the organization you work for should have spent more in security.

The thieves climbed up to the second floor and smashed a window. I'm not sure what kind of security could have prevented this.

Eyes on the building. Bars/shutters on the windows. An alarm system. Caltrops on the floor. A locked room with a decent door for the laptops, and/or a strongbox. Africanized killer bees. Full-disk encryption on the laptops themselves.

There's plenty of reasonable measures that organizations can take to protect their equipment and data. "Give the laptops to the employees, they might be stolen if left in the building" is not one of them, not if they care at all about information security.

This is a curious statement. Why would someone having a bunch of laptops require password resets? Weren’t the laptops properly configured so physical access != network access? If not, then having people commuting with these timebombs is not a good idea. As it’s much more likely that a laptop will be stolen from a worker’s home or car or anywhere than the office.

you cant be serious

In a recent office I worked in they were just looking for the large iMac screens :-) Although I don't think there were any laptops lying around...