Sorry, Shags, I didn’t know you were with the FBI. I’m speaking from my experience with local police, who are often interested in knowing what’s going on in their community.
But I do wish you’d read my posts; no one said anything about demanding the police investigate petty theft, of swim fins or anything else. Not me, not the OP.
It’s a small matter. Your oversight. An items you can, and have ,easily replaced.
You don’t actually know that someone took them, only that they are no longer where you believe you left them.
Police services costs are constantly rising, they cannot hope to retrieve your misplaced items. Let them spend your tax dollars actually making a difference and focus their resources on the things they know need attention.
Let it go. Move on.
You’re considering reporting an item you lost as stolen. That’s not only a waste of police resources, it’s the very height of delusion.
You can’t hold strangers accountable to the “reasonable person” standard without holding yourself to the same. No reasonable person expects that an item left in an open, public place would be recoverable hours/days later. If the item had been taken from a locked locker, that would be theft. You’re just being ridiculous.
While you’re at it, file a report for those lost socks that didn’t make it out of the dryer. Over time they’re worth more than those fins.
I’ve been hanging around the Dope for quite some time–my account says December 2003 (I’m sure it’s been longer than that though), and I’ve read millions of threads and responses, and turned to those same Dopers several times in the past dozen plus years to garner their thoughts and opinions. I must say, the amount of snark in this thread surprises me. (Although I know it probably shouldn’t.)
To me, it wasn’t the value of what had been stolen/gone missing or even if they item would ever be located, but the ethical question behind it–should a crime be reported? Perhaps I should have been very specific in my original post, and that I obviously wasn’t is my error.
“When someone says it’s not the money, but the principle of the thing, it’s the money.” – Kin Hubbard
But then again, “A witty saying proves nothing.” – Voltaire
Pragmatically speaking, how well do you believe your attempt at a police report would be received? If this is a theft, it’s the most trivial kind – perhaps not stolen at all, and if so of ridiculously low monetary value.
The police do nothing out of principle. To secure any law enforcement interest, It has to involve loss of, or harm to, human life or valuable property. If you get any response at all, it’ll be filed at the bottom of the compost heap for all eternity. And almost certainly not figure into any metrics.
You don’t KNOW a crime has been committed. All you know is that your fins are missing. You left them behind in error. It’s equally plausible that they were picked up in error. Or put in the trash by custodial staff. Or they may be in the lost and found bin which nobody wants to dig through. Or, perhaps check with the pool staff. More often than not, they have sundry gear left behind by patrons which then becomes public property and is loaned to people who forgot theirs.
Having said that, they were probably taken because they looked abandoned. Not exactly a great train robbery.
This, exactly. You are using a public space, you are responsible for keeping an eye on your stuff. They weren’t taken from the side of the pool while you swam. You left them in the locker room. And they are pretty darned inexpensive.
I’m surprised the snark surprises you, because the idea of wasting law enforcement resources over your screw-up and such a minimal loss is ridiculous.
And while you might want to tell the mgmt you left your fins in case they get turned in, since you don’t know what happened, it would be unfair to do anything to suggest the facility has a theft problem. If your gym’s locker room is anything like mine, I could imagine some later patron being pissed at someone having left their crap lying around, and tossed them in the trash.
I bet the janitors threw them in the trash, we had a locker room policy that was in your locker or in the trash.
I’ve left a few things behind at the gym, and some of them have been in the lost and found. I left my rescue inhaler behind and someone did turn it in, but because it was medicine I’m sure it was tossed.
I doubt they were stolen. Like others have said, the fins probably got tossed or misplaced. Just be a bit more careful next time. It happens.
Just last month my sister called to say that someone had stolen a few of the solar powered candy canes that lined her walkway. She lives in a very nice neighborhood, and was upset that someone had come onto her property (if only by a few feet).
I jokingly told her to call the local police department - she took me seriously, and called. They actually sent out a squad car to take a report! The police officer told her that he would keep his eyes open for the missing candy canes (perhaps they had been thrown onto someone else’s lawn).
I was absolutely stunned by this - I can’t even get the police where I live to take me seriously when I report the stolen cars and drug dealing outside my house.
TL/DR: perhaps the OP lives where my sister does! 
I would report it, the police may already had some complaints and your report will be another part of the Jig-saw. Our local police were receiving complaints about people breaking into cars, one night there was a knock at the door, it was the police to tell us they had caught a couple lads breaking into my daughters car. They had used the reports to work out the best time and place to catch them. So yes report it
In recent months, I have lost two pillowcases in my dryer. I don’t know how that happened either.
I mentioned the first one on Facebook, and one person replied that she lost a whole pillow in hers! Not sure how that could happen, and she’s not the kind of person who would make up something like that.
So, it’s considered snark if it’s not what you want to hear?
You don’t know that someone saw them and incorrectly assumed they were Bob’s! Cause they just saw him with some last week. They did him a favour and popped them into their trunk to give him later. But they forgot about them. Were so embarrassed, when they did see him, and he said they weren’t his, they dropped them into the next Goodwill bin they saw!
You, in fact, don’t KNOW this was a crime.