This is what I think the police are for but as you say, it's hard to figure out what they actually are for these days. And to be clear, it's not just the police, decades-long underfunding of the public legal systems, prisons, and all the services that are supposed to stop people ending up that far in the first place.

But I'm not sure it's good to stop expecting the police to deal with this. That sort of surrender to criminality would be a dark step for humanity.