I remember this! I got finger printed at some event where police had a booth next to the fire dept (who were espousing bike helmets and teaching kids how to properly wear one etc, actually useful safety info). It wasn't until I was a teenager when my first car was broken into and the speakers stolen that I realized how useless that endeavor must be. The officer who responded (my first time calling the police, not running from them!) was pretty upfront with me. As he took finger prints from the area where the door was jimmied, I was like "cool, finger printing!" and he told me this wouldn't likely lead to anything. First he said "You'll never get your speakers back, even if we found them we wouldn't call you, they'd probably be in a lot of all kinds of other stolen stuff and it's impossible to sort through and return stolen items." Bummer number one. Then he explained that the finger prints would only be useful if the thief got picked up for doing something else, he wasn't going to go run the prints and try to find the person etc like I was probably imagining (I was, I admit, thinking that's what happened when they took finger prints - thanks TV). Standing in my driveway I flashed back immediately to that finger printing booth where my parents were told it would help if I got kidnapped, and thought "Oh great, I'm in the system." Not that I had a life of crime in mind, but the internet of the early 90s really gave me a healthy distrust of being tracked, logged, etc. (Oh if we only knew the hellscape ahead.)