police want to crack down on everything. i suppose its good in the end, but statistics have shown (although they might have improved) that police only solve 18% of crimes.
Someone stole something from you? There's no point in calling the cops as you won't get it back anyway. It's only a lot of stress as they question you about everything. They don't really find criminals. They are busy chasing "illegal" file downloaders though.
Last weekend I was on a party where definitely a lot of suspicious guys were doing "not exactly legal things", someone called the cops because the music was too loud and they only gave a warning. And yeah, they saw everything.
So I guess you can do more here without being all that stressed but I doubt that the difference is all that big.