Its not an issue of real crime or not. The issue is if you only have a certain number of cars with cops in them do you want to have one of them spend a half-hour taking a report for a crime when the criminal is long gone? I think I'd rather have the car available for a quicker response to an in-progress crime, and let a civilian take the report over the phone. The crime is still documented, and its not like patterns of such crimes still can't be tracked to better place undercover stakeout-type units. As for the other stuff, being hard on dangerous drivers (not someone that misses a red light by a tenth of a second like the cameras seem to love) saves lives and saves people money.
"You're basically saying that if a criminal isn't caught in the act by the police, then don't bother them with it. Your attitude sucks."
My attitude is just fine, thank you very much. Treating every "smash and grab" like the Lindbergh kidnapping decreases response time to both serious crimes and minor in-progress ones. If you want to attack the concept back it up with something other than your antipathy towards LE. I think its a step towards allocating scarce resources more efficiently.
This is a crux of where we disagree. I think property crimes are important - more important than administrative ones that tend to net the government revenue. But I see a different role for the government than you do. I see its primary role to protect the lives and property of citizens. Most neo-cons see government's role as to tell everyone what to do about everything. And when I see plenty of resources available for traffic fund raisers, but get a brush off letter for property crime, then I disagree with the allocation.
Some ass targeted my mailbox with his car. Called the cops and one came to take a report. In the middle of doing a report he got a call. He said, "I'll be back" and took off.
Didn't seem to slow him down responding to when he needed to. Plus the cops got some important face time with the community.
Last thing we need are the cops turning into faceless desk jockies.