It's not that simple

Sometimes I really wish life was like it is on TV shows. In this case I would like it to be like CSI. See, a little over a week ago my house was broken into, my big TV was stolen, along with my XBox360, Wii, and all the games that go with them. I filed a police report and gave them names of suspects as I thought it might have been people my roommate knew, but without anything more to go on they can't do anything about it. We also found fingerprints on the back window where they broke in, and when the cop told me they were very clear and should be easy to match I got pretty exicited that they might actually be able to get the guys who did this (I know it was more than one because my TV was a 55" and impossible to move by yourself). Then the cop said they check prints by priority based on the severity of the crime, meaning murder, rape and such would take priority over something like burglary, but priority is also based on the quality of the prints, so mine would probably be pretty high up with the other burglary prints. Well that makes sense, so I answered the rest of his questions, had him take down the serial numbers of what was stolen and he left.

Now if things were like in CSI, they would have somebody checking all these prints trying to match them in their computer program that scans the entire database and finds matches, and it would only take like 10 minutes per print. Given this is the only knowledge I really have of how this stuff works, I figured a few weeks, a month at most, and they would either match the prints or find out they aren't in the system, either way I would have an answer. Well I called yesterday to check and see if there were any updates and the officer asked if I had any proof that it was any of the suspects we had given him before, but of course I don't, so I asked him about the prints. He proceeded to tell me the same thing the other guy had said about the priority thing, but this one said for burglary it could take up to 6 months to make it to the top of the list and get checked. Damn, I guess it takes a lot longer to match prints in real life than it does in CSI, but I guess that makes sense. I know computers are fast, but to check every print on file in just one city would take a while, and while I doubt they check against the entire country unless they have to, just checking the county must take a long time, and for how many crimes actually happen out there, my little burglary crime has a long way to go to get those prints matched. But the officer also told me he'd see about looking up the records of those few names of suspects we gave him and seeing if the prints matched, which apparently they haven't done yet.

Up until I had this information I thought it might be a good idea no to replace the stuff I lost yet in hopes that they would find the guys soon and I would either have it back or be reimbursed or something, but it doesn't look like that's gonna happen. So if any of you know of any good deals going on for TVs or game systems then let me know, I'll be looking to replace what I lost in the next few weeks assuming those prints don't match any of the suspects.