The comments "won't do any jail time" are so true.
I'll make this story as short as I can: Several years ago, I had a late 50s Chevy panel van and an early 40s GMC pickup stolen from my property. First, neither vehicle was running, so both had to be trailered away. (That's somewhat important) Anyway, I stopped into the police station and the first lady I talked to wanted me to forget about it because "they are scrapped, stripped and long gone". I insisted they file a police report. The policeman assigned to the case was going to the area where the vehicle had been stolen, but we had several inches of snow about 4 days later and when I called him, he told me the snow would have covered any evidence.
I kept my niece involved with all this because she was a state trooper in my state and knew a lot of people and called around to area law enforcement agencies to pressure them to keep investigate my thefts. However, at this time I gave up all hope to have the vehicles recovered.
About four months later, I get a call from her. It turns out somebody had stolen a riding lawn mower from a guy's yard during the winter and drove away with it when there was snow on the ground.
The police simply followed the lawn mower tracks in the snow to where the mower disappeared behind a fence. They then got a search warrant and went behind the fence to investigate. They found about $100K worth of stolen property behind the fence, arrested the owner and then started to call the owners of the stolen property to tell them that their stuff had been found. Luckily, I had valid titles to my stolen vehicles so it was easy to identify my stolen vehicles. My niece actually called me to tell me my stolen vehicles had been recovered. The area where they were recovered was about 90 minutes away from me and the out-of-county police department told me that I would received a victim's compensation for my trouble getting them home. I asked them how long they would hold my vehicles and they said the case had to be signed off by the county judge, the chief of police and the prosecuting DA before I could get them back, but they'd give me plenty of advance notice when I needed to pick them up. Fast forward about two months later and I get a call from the police on a Tuesday afternoon that my vehicles had to be out of the police impound yard in 48 hours or they would be given eminent domain and they would be sold on public auction.
(So much for the plenty of advance notice) I tool the next day off of work to bring them home. Remember, this police impound yard was about 90 minutes away from me. I get there and the impound yard tells me I have to pay a $150 fee for the storage of my vehicles, but the towing fee had been waived as a goodwill gesture.
I brought up the fact that there was a victim's compensation fund coming my way, but I was then informed that because I was from a different county I couldn't collect on that. Fine. I made two trips to the impound yard (90 minutes one way) and trailered my vehicles home.
My county DA finally make court arrangements to have him prosecuted in my county and she asked me if I wanted victim's compensation or if I wanted the guy to spend time in jail for his crime. Knowing full well what victim's compensation amounted to, I demanded that he spend time in jail for his offenses. It was well known that this guy had an accomplice because he didn't own a trailer to move my vehicles around, but he would not cooperate with authorities to tell them who had helped him out. My county DA decided that victim's compensation was the correct punishment.
(I forgot to say there was a lot more stolen items recovered in the thief's yard from my county. Remember there was over $100K worth of stuff recovered) I filled out a form how much it costs to recover my property and the thief and his lawyer agreed to that amount. The thief then promptly declared that he was disabled, couldn't work and there was no money for compensation.
So now my tax dollars are still paying for his ability to breath air.
On the bright side, I got my vehicles back.
