TBH in a city area (not just London) where people are shooting and stabbing each other, violent incidents are commonplace and there are other crimes involving big companies with more power than a mere individual being ripped off and thousands of pounds involved its hardly surprising. To recover the bike in the "correct" manner using todays policing procedures would require uniformed and CID units, as well as an Evidence Gathering Team as well as backup for both officers and informants in case things go pear shaped and ironically the cops would just as equally be criticised for using such a large amount of resources to assist one private company with their publicity drive as oppposed to "serving the public as a whole"
with no central register of bicycles its also hard for a cop to prove they are stolen unless the thief is blatantly caught in the act, the bike is taken amongst other property used in a burglary or there is violence used - people can claim and counterclaim and say the bike was taken in payment of a civil debt etc...
in the pre-airwave days I used to listen to the scanner (yes, I know it was naughty) and when the cops say they have no resources they genuinely aren't lying. Its a dysfunctional world with a lot of scum about and plenty else to keep them occupied.
to be fair the Eastern constabularies (Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambs) did catch a load of bike thieves in 2006 or so but this was an organised gang from East Europe targeting places such as the centre of Norwich and Cambridge with vans to take away the bikes and they were only caught after months of trawling through CCTV evidence.
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