I also think the police just don't take it very seriously. Certainly that's the case here in SF. I've reported a number of stolen bikes over the years and my impression was of massive indifference. After bike number 7 was stolen, I just gave up. A few years later I'm thinking about buying a bike again, and risk of theft is my number one concern.

Well, not to defend the police, but after a bike is stolen I don't know what you could expect them to do.

Even if they had a dedicated bike recovery task force, the most they could do is visit local pawn shops and browse community marketplaces for a bike matching the description (assuming it wasn't broken down for parts).

Now, before a bike is stolen, I'd expect police to actually patrol places where bikes are being commonly stolen from (or for that matter, places where cars are commonly broken into). That part is something I do blame them for. The fact that SF is basically synonymous with "don't leave anything in the car" is an indictment on local police.

I think it would be great if they actually policed not just the pawn shops and sketchier bike shops, but also the people randomly selling them on the street and the back-alley bicycle chop shops, which are easily visible. Instead of the theft victims wandering the neighborhood trying to find their bike and get it back, which is what happens a lot here, I would like the police to take a swing at it.

But from the air of the police taking reports, absolutely nothing will happen. One time a cop asked me why I was bothering, did I need it for insurance or something? No, I told him, it was a crime and I figured that being police, they'd want to know. That seemed novel to him.

But I don't just want them to do something for me after my bicycle is stolen. I'd like them to be energetic enough in running down organized bike theft operations that those criminals find some other line of work. And a good way way to do that is taking individual bike thefts seriously.

I really have to wonder what cops spend their days doing. They don't seem to care about the most common crimes which really stinks.

Here in Toronto I (and a bunch of other people) witnessed a bike being stolen in broad daylight on a major street downtown.

Naturally we took videos and called the cops. Naturally the cops didn't show up (the store manager we left the videos and pictures with said they did show up like 7 hours later). In the subsequent 10 minutes the thief came back and stole two more bikes, while we continued to watch and video (and not physically intervene, because fighting a guy with a power tool is a really stupid idea).

If the cops showed up promptly at the very least they could have prevented two bikes from being stolen. There's a good chance they would have managed to arrest the thief too.

It also seems like a good candidate for sting operations. Put expensive bikes out with flimsy locks in places with high rates of theft and have undercover officers watch them. When they're stolen, either arrest the thieves immediately or follow them for awhile to figure out who they're working for.