> In many areas of the US, that trigger happy cop will be the difference between you recovering your propert

A cop's not going to get your bike back. They'll write a report and then throw it away when you leave.

In my experience, the most an American cop is going to do to help you resolve a property crime is take a report. If they happen to find the item, you _may_ get it back.

However this is a required step for submitting to many consumer insurance programs

And probably the answer for why things are the way they are: most people likely just want the report for insurance payout, and not getting their used thing back.

That's why it's important to be friends with ex-Special Forces and ex-MMA fighters.

In what area of the US do the police actually recover bikes?

If you show the police officer a live location of your stolen property moving on a map, that's usually enough to motivate them into action. I've seen two stolen phones recovered this way. If you tell them your bike is stolen and that's all the information you have, they rightly deduce that there's almost no chance of you getting it back.

There's tons of people who've posted about people telling cops exactly which house their stolen property is in (using Find My Phone/Whatever) and cops simply saying they can't/won't do anything.

This is what happens most of the time -- cops just don't care in the majority of cases.