It's not just NZ. Police in the US are no better. In the Dallas PD, the detective assigned to the case when our house was burgled would not respond to emails sent to him providing evidence. After reaching out through other avenues to reach the detective, he flat out responded with being too busy to read emails. The case went uncleared. However, a few weeks later, there was a random call saying they found an iPad reported as lost/stolen and would be willing to return it for a small finder's fee. Again, the police refused to assist during the meet up.
I've noticed in my lifetime that a number of crimes have become ad-hoc decriminalized.
Smaller crimes like bicycle theft or small electronics are basically "who cares" to the police. Many police departments don't even do bicycle registrations anymore.
Even car theft has sort of fallen to insurance companies to take care of. A lot of people just want a police report to turn in to insurance so they can get a new car.
I don't know about serious crimes. Are people more often caught with lots of data and the erosion of privacy?
I'm sure they prefer to focus on bigger cases - why go with a single bike theft if they can investigate an organized bike theft and laundering organization? Why bother with a single phone theft if they find a warehouse full of stolen merchandise?
But yeah, that does mean a lot of petty crime goes unpunished. Stealing a bike here has become normalized - as in, "my bike got stolen, I need to get home so I'll just steal another". Mind you that's only possible with shoddy locks.
> Why bother with a single phone theft if they find a warehouse full of stolen merchandise?
Because many more people are affected by minor crime than major crime. In the UK, where the police's funding has been reduced significantly, it's next to impossible to get them to do anything for burglary and minor thefts (although they're quite reactive if you say something impolitic on Twitter).
All your options assume a perfectly rational world. The world we have now is not one of those 3 options, but it exists. Things are often internally contradictory.
On Rentals I would disagree. Most rentals today depend on 3: to reclaim the money from the original purchase they force every user to pay, using police and court system as the means to enforce that payment and to prevent theft. Maybe in an anarchy rentals would also be quite successful by centralizing the problem of keeping property safe.
Services like Uber are interesting because they essentially strive to eleminate ownership by eleminating the thing to be owned.
When I get frustrated with the police, it helps to remember that they make like $25/hr or less. In a wealthy suburb I just moved into a few months ago, I learned that a majority of the children of the police are growing up below the poverty line.
The local politicians are apparently very liberal about their views on police (do not support), so they keep the pay as low as possible. All the police have to live outside the community and commute to work the area since it is unaffordable for them to live here.
I’m actually surprised they serve as well as they do under the circumstances.
