Why are the police so useless when it comes to solving real crimes?

I have noticed unless the culprit is on the scene when they get there, cops really dont put much effort into handling burglaries, assaults, rapes, etc. It might be my local police in the cities I have lived, but I have had so many people close to me attacked and give full descriptions and the cops just took notes and logged it into case files. In my own experience when I was attacked by a schizophrenic homeless man, I followed him and got the cops to detain him. They immediately let him go, and told me there was nothing they could do; even though there were two witnesses.

But get caught with weed, speeding, or driving after a beer lol

There are multiple countries on this forum. and regions within America the size of a country. Are you implying ALL police are useless?

How bad was the attack though? Cops are pretty busy I know here. Plus most cops aren't detectives so there doing a few cases at a time which would build up not to mention even if they have fingerprints they have to search by eye its not done on a computer so there's thousands of records to go though its not like TV. Its a lot harder than that. Think about it. How back logged would cops be if they followed up every case where 90% of the time insurances covers the damage. Plus if you get caught with weed, speeding or drink drive the cop can do something there and then because they have evidence and its only a fine. Imagine if you went to jail every single time less would be done about it. If you really want it to change become one and do something about it.

Workload. They have to balance and follow-up on a lot of things. Also, like was hinted at, given the volume of work, police will prefer to follow-up/pursue cases that are more likely to stick.

Also, they're human.

You answered your own question there dude.

Lol good point

You have a DUI?

A few subjective incidents (which I think your version is skewed) = all police are terrible at their jobs?

Man you people have lost your minds.

Because real life isn't a tv show that needs to be wrapped up in 60 minutes. =P