Street Bike theft is a trivial crime that isn't worth wasting resources on. Most bikes are petty larceny unless they are $1000+ and that is the value of the bike at the time of theft, not the fact you paid $3000 for it 5 years ago.

Typically when the police are involved it's organized crime situations of mass bike theft from shops or containers that bring much higher chargers.

I knew a person who airtagged their bike before it was stolen, drove to where it was and visually confirmed it, then reported it to the police who said “Nothing I can do.”

There are multiple cases of individual bike thefts being connected to larger organized crime groups. Of course, we often only know that because of investigations by people who aren't police.

The case you are linking to involves $5000+ bikes. That's not petty theft, that's similar to car theft. The crime is already grand larceny per theft. Of course with that amount of money people are going to be way more motivated, and it's going to be a small subset of very wealthy enthusiasts. The vast majority of bikes people ride and that get stolen are in the $100 range, usually by homeless people who part them out for scrap metal to get money for drugs. In my city any homeless encampment has piles of stolen bikes that are torn apart because the alloy parts are what they can scrap for some decent money. The steel is worthless.

Because there isn't in most cases.

In cases of confrontation/bike recovery you have to have proof of ownership and you have to proof of theft.

Also in a big city dept, they simple don't care about petty theft.

My police department has a registry of bikes by photo and serial number. If registered, they can return stolen bikes.

do they give a fuck? Nah.

The lost value of bike theft is not the value of the bike. It's way worse the value of the perceived safety.

For every bike that is stolen, tens of people hear how city X is full of bike thieves, deterring them from buying a bike themselves. Which results in more cars and less bikes. Which is very damaging. Way worse than the price of the bike.

Just grab the bike and fuck up anyone who tries to stop you from retrieving your property then.

That is actually how that story ends, haha.

Fuck yeah!