Regardless if it's the police brushing me off over a theft, or Uvalde... it all leads to one place: the public's eroding trust in the police.

They're really not there to protect and serve. That was a LAPD marketing motto that a ton of other police departments adopted over the years for optics. The police actually have no such legal duty, and this has been upheld in court multiple times.

I am 100% on your side, but in good faith we cannot expect the police to serve us. Your "first/two" analogy is moot I'm afraid.

Third, if police never bother with "trivial" thefts like bags, cellphones, laptops, and purses, it means that a single thief can steal hundreds of such items and never be caught. If the police make an occasional effort to solve trivial thefts they might prevent tens of thousands of dollars of recurring theft by the same person.

> If the police make an occasional effort to solve trivial thefts they might prevent tens of thousands of dollars of recurring theft by the same person.

Statistically speaking, would that make any difference though?

Yes, he wouldn’t be touting about it and invite his friends to do the same. Or he’s get caught and all the friend would laugh at him and feel good about not stealing.

Sometimes pursuing crime does have an effect.

It could make a huge difference to the people who get their stuff back, and the ones who don't get it stolen because the thief was caught before they could target them.

personally i think thats time better spent then a lot of what the police spend their time and effort on

I've pretty much never experienced police caring much about typical stolen items. The only thing that they tend to expend effort on is stolen cars IME (non-US experience, developed country). They might help with a stolen laptop if helping is utterly trivial for them.

Fwiw in Japan I lost my ID and reported it to the police, they found it within a day.

Ive seen them accompany people to retrieve stolen bicycles. In my experience, they're not interested in doing detective work to locate stolen items, but if you know where the stolen item is, they will accompany you to retrieve the item.

Ok, so what do you suggest the police do? There are literally only so many hours in a day and only so many police officers… if we appointed you police chief tomorrow, how are you going to solve this issue?

Triaging crime doesn’t necessarily mean favoritism. You can have set criteria you use to determine which crimes you investigate and how much time you spend on each.

That's definitely awful idea but... commercialize police services to some degree.

I.e. have "personal support" division where one can pay per hour to solve small (non violent) problems, such as small-items recovery, acts of vandalisms. Like private detective but with more rights and somewhat co-payed.

It probably wouldn't make any sense if the item in question would be of low value, but if payment for recovering airtagged belongings of 1000$ would be like 50$/h then probably it would be of value.

Yet, deep inside I feel it's a slippery scope into incorporating the police, and I'm not really fan of the idea.

Isn’t that just a private detective? That already exists

Private detective is not subsidized and also they limited with actions. Don't expect private detective to enter someone house to recover AirPods. If police declines further actions even if PI pinpoints their position you're still SOL.

I think we both agree on what ought to be; just now how it is.