Hmmm. Maybe the problem is that the police are Luddites.
Before you can bust down a door, you often need to do a lot of work. People tend to underestimate this greatly. And any hours spent on this one iPhone isn't spent catching rapists (for example). If only the issues were as simple to solve as people commenting here make it seem.
But there was no attempt to get one, or even just to knock on the door. There was no attempt to do anything apart from record the fact that a crime had (allegedly) occurred. Which, no matter how understandable, is not exactly the pursuit of justice.
> And any hours spent on this one iPhone isn't spent catching rapists (for example).
Okay, so I understand that you have recently taken a job with law enforcement and I can see why you feel the need to defend your workplace but the point remains that objectively speaking, whether one thinks the US police is benevolent or malicious, they don't really do much for the vast majority of property crimes. It's simply not a priority, as you've inadvertently said yourself.
Plus law enforcement...doesn't exactly catch a lot of rapists either.
That wasn't inadvertent, that was precisely the point they're trying to make to you — resources aren't unlimited and thus need to be triaged.
This would be true even if law enforcement didn't completely suck for orthogonal reasons.
The perceived emergency in the bogus 911 call adds some weight of course, but in lots of cases the Police seem far too gung ho to roll out heavy and bust down some doors. Not to say that it is an appropriate response to go raid a house in search of a reportedly stolen phone, but goddamn.
Now, I'm not saying cops don't abuse their power nor what response they should give to an "obviously" bogus threat, but even for a trigger happy cop, why bother the risk for someone's phone when there are gonna be hundreds of "credible" threats? I doubt even a crooked cop would be willing to break the rules over someone's stole phone.
Old roommate's company in SF - Car, bikes and computers. Car was stashed in Bayview & cops waited till they had enough backup to lock down the blocks around the house, thieves weren't there unfortunately.