Instead of declaring all bike thieves felons and imprisoning the 1% of them we manage to catch, we should spend our money on sting operations that catch the 50 or so individuals in each city that steal 80% of the bikes, and reserve the felony treatment for repeat offenders.
I like the bait bike operations some police departments do to catch the shops buying stolen bikes. Addicts steal things they can fence and cutting into the business side means you don’t have to catch nearly as many people, although Facebook is determined to fill some of the gaps.
I helped catch one of these repeat offenders when my bike was stolen. When it was recovered they told me they had a huge warehouse of bikes that nobody would claim, and mentioned 90%-ish of all bikes aren’t recovered and they were having space problems just storing all the unclaimed bikes. First thing we actually need to do is get people to register their bikes before they’re stolen, and then report them missing after.
Funny side note, the cops actually offered to let me setup the sting, make contact with the thief and pose as a buyer. I was sure they’d sternly recommend I do not get involved, so I was very surprised, but it was a busy night when I called and they had no officers immediately available. I did make online contact, but due to delays setting up the meet, the cops ended up handling it without me, and when I went to pick it up they were rightfully very proud of catching the guy and being able to return the bike to me.
You had better luck than me. The San Jose PD only begrudgingly gave me a police report weeks after reporting it (needed it for insurance purposes), and told me a could get a copy of it a month later. I'd have to go to the records dept in person between the hours of 10AM - 2PM (email a copy? Are you crazy?).
So I did that, showed up. No other people there. Person behind the counter told me they were too busy, and I'd have to show up some other (unspecified) day.
A bummer, sorry to hear it, that sounds frustrating. The big difference might be that I found my bike for sale in the local classified ads (a couple weeks after it was stolen), and I had the thief’s phone number, before I called the cops. They recognized the phone number. My PD might also do little to nothing if I just report something missing. I do think I got lucky, yes. And I was extra lucky that the thief listed my bike for a completely ridiculous amount of money, more than the original purchase price for a bike that was like 15 years old and not as well maintained as it should have been. His list price meant nobody else jumped on buying it right away. (But I do know now that my chances of recovery go way up if I register a bike.)
