How are people thinking they will get better police service (or any police service) by reducing police budgets? Most of said budget is spent on pensions anyway from the breakdowns I’ve seen. It’s not like cops are rolling in it. Even if you rake in overtime you still have to work during that time.
But even in well funded departments the response is laughable. At best if your stolen item is serialized they will record that number and it will be recovered at a later date when they happen to bust someone for something else and catalog everything they found in the vicinity and their computer system tells them your thing was reported stolen.
>Even if you rake in overtime you still have to work during that time.
The Massachusetts State Police and their 2-5yr recurring "whoops it looks like a bunch of people were getting paid for working overtime that wasn't actually worked, we'll fire someone as a sacrificial lamb and go right back to what we were doing" scandal would beg to differ.
That said, as much as it pains me to defend them, the fact that the job can be easy money for anyone willing to step in line with the organization means that you get people who just want to slack and make easy money or want to over achieve and run a full fledged side business on company time (MSP isn't the only MA gov department where people do this but they're known internally for it) and not the people who want to LARP as soldiers and kick down doors. As a result they don't often wind up receiving allegations of excessive force.
Obviously this is by no means and ideal status quo but it's far superior to having a more violent police force.