Where are you seeing the difference?

Oh yeah - it was already being given parking tickets too. While it was reported stolen. I had to go to the local court in person in order to get the tickets revoked.

Law enforcement and the general institution of law does not care.

I've also seen cops change tires and things like that.

Even for people I knew in law enforcement in the rural areas - they didn't like to live in the area they were policing because of the consequences. You're now a local who has to live with the consequences of how you've treated people during your job.

That was fine for a while, but eventually it got hard for cities to attract new cops, a lot of them removed those rules.

I think there is only so much they can do from a systemic point of view, since they can't put the manpower into looking for them. When they are recovered it's usually because it's related to some other police activity that occurred and it was collateral to that. Same with bikes I think.

I always figured it was supposed to not work like this, as the title change is the one place you can catch it, but I guess not? Must be reporting it as abandoned when it really isn't.

I agree institutions are absurd and don't care enough though.

TLDR: Don't blame the street-level bureaucrats and everyone in the institution for policy failures.

You fail to understand that this is a public policy issue. I bet you the average individual cop does care. I use the term average so people don't resort to extremes (good cop or bad cop). His workload is so high that your issue falls below his threshold. It's not his fault, it's the fault of local public policy. It's undermanned and underfunded.

I remember my brother yelling at an Amazon driver for speeding. He's incentivized to do so by his employer. Yes, the driver probably shouldn't speed, but he's also not making very much money and needs this job. His employer is likely more guilty for not providing additional drivers, at cost, to allow safety. But that would be a market imperfection due to externalities which are not regulated (the externality being public safety - the cost of which the private institution generally does not bear). The same type of issue occurrs in the public policy arena, but the failure is on the lack of funding towards a known issue which results in poor services to the public. No, people cannot do more with less with zero losses.

Nothing special about this. If anything of yours is stolen, the cops will not help you recover it.

Honestly, I don't really think police should be in the business of tracking down stolen items unless finding the items leads them to the theives. So unless the theft of items is under some larger crime, why should cops be on the look out for a bicycle/car/tv/xbox/etc?

It's pretty much what insurance is for. Now, I'd much rather the police investigate the crimes committed by insurance companies on not paying out the claims. At least, that should be a crime.

This is probably a big part of the problem really, why would they care about getting property back to the owners when they can profit from it?

I was very surprised to read in a big city newspaper recently that the city's police department had a 70-something percent success rate in recovering stolen cars and returning them to their owners.

I was really shocked, because I just assumed that it would be like that scene in The Big Lebowski where the cop laughs when the guy who's car was stolen asks if they have any leads. It turns out that's not the reality at all.

Not the same thing. The parent comment is saying that the police department is getting ahold of the stolen bikes, but not making any effort to return them to their rightful owners.

If your stolen car is abandoned somewhere and found by the police, you'll be getting a call ASAP. They're obviously not out there scanning every car on the road to see if it's yours, but if it comes into their possession it's going to find its way back to the registered owner very quickly.