I had a home burglary a few years ago, a few months later, I found my wife's compound bow on eBay, offered by a local pawn shop. I went to the shop and talked privately to the owner who, after seeing a copy of the police report, agreed that the bow was the one stolen from my home. Of course, he could not give me the name of the person who pawned it, but he did show me everything that person had pawned and asked if any of it was mine (it wasn't). He also told me that, by law, a list of every item pawned was uploaded to a law enforcement database each day and that law enforcement could look at every item the person had pawned at any pawn shop in the state. He told me to notify the sheriff's office, have then come by and pick up the bow and the name of the person who pawned it.
I went straight to the sheriff's office, talked to a detective and gave him all the info......called back 2 weeks later and they hadn't even gone to the shop to get the name of the person who pawned my stuff. As far as I know, they never did.
Talk about a slam dunk gimme.......all they had to do was get the persons name, look up what he had pawned on the database, confirm that it matched items taken from my house (and probably others) and arrest him........guess they were too busy writing tickets or eating donuts.......
Writing a search warrant takes time. sometimes hours to complete in order for a local judge to say yes to it. Patrol officers do not have the time and in many cases the talent (training) to write the warrants. They could do a knock and talk but now you have tipped off the bad guys.
There is another issue, manpower. Our city council and manager made sure we were always understaffed. ($$$$$ and maybe politics) If you have 3 calls for service and only 2 officers on duty, something goes undone. The same goes for the detective section. I always had too many cases and not enough time in one day. I did try hard to work burglaries and felonies but that meant something else had to suffer.
That's the way it is and I did not like it then and I do not like it now.
kwg
