There’s a budget, and they prioritize certain crimes. I feel it’s how police departments are run everywhere. My home was burglarized some years ago. The police in Utrecht will not come if you call them, it’s an insurance case. However, in my case I was at home, and there was a fight. In that case, it’s not just burglary, but home invasion, and when my partner called, police arrived with three cars in about 5 minutes.

Sure, but the claim here isn’t that police don’t have the budget to respond. It’s that they’re not bothering to do their jobs because they think it’s “pointless”.

I would actually love for police to harass thieves even if prosecutors, in the end, would refuse to prosecute them. If nothing else, many criminals are dumb; they might do something dumb while interacting with police and either get prosecuted for that, or get put down on the spot.

However, the problem of prioritization by police is exactly that. Police could be doing any number of things; if the outcome of arresting someone is nothing happens, literally any other remaining work, including the kind that could be expanded a lot - e.g. patrolling - becomes higher priority. But ofc Seattle police for example is so under-staffed that they have trouble with 911 calls and sexual assault investigation backlog.

> Again, they’re literally paid to respond to those crimes.

Eh, this part is dubious. They have no duty to protect, and no duty to respond to a crime.

> What is the point of police if they’re ignoring reports?

Lots of people asking this question lately. It's a good one.

That's the whole point of the system. Your reports are ignored, but when it hurts the bottom line of someone actually important, then:

"Breed has repeatedly promised to catch the perpetrators and even incentivized residents with up to $100,000 rewards for information leading to arrests."

Like they say, not their job anymore. Sort it out yourself.

That’s a good argument for defunding the police. If it’s not their job, I certainly don’t want my tax money paying them to not do it.