Devash, I think you may be mixing up the Police with judiciary. The Police have no influence over the punishment, which in turn doesn’t influence a Police Officer’s investigation.
The Police do think it’s worth it – bicycle theft is usually by means of Burglary, which is a National priority. Burglaries are usually the type of incident that will get any Cop racing to the scene. However, you have to put this in the context of budget cuts. I recall hearing last week that Police Officer numbers were lower now than at any time since 1993. Just a very quick look at the Government statistics shows a reduction of 15,859 officers since 2010. Quite simply, there aren’t enough Police to deal with the volume of crime. Because of further budget cuts, this will only get worse. As an example, when I started working in my particular dept/specialism in 2003, there were over 130 of us – there are now 37. Now, we weren’t over staffed; we were incredibly pro-active. Unfortunately we are now a reactive unit, that offers very little in the way of prevention.
The Police are interested, there just aren’t that many around any more.