You’ve heard it by now. If your iPhone is stolen from your car in Seattle, you can track it to wherever the thieves are, and you can find them sitting in their van with your stuff, and you can call the police to report your amateur sleuthing, and what’ll happen? Probably nothing. At least that was the experience of the Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat in late October.

Westneat sat sullenly in the crowd at a city council committee meeting yesterday as Seattle Police Department officials and council members brought up his column more than once. Council Member Bruce Harrell, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, had asked the department for an update on how they handle reports of “low-level” crimes like theft. In response, the police department offered what basically amounted to a, “We’re working on it.”

Today, if you call the police about a theft, you’re going to reach the same dispatchers who take all 911 calls and you’ll be put on hold until they’re done handling all the life-threatening stuff. Meanwhile, everyone else who calls about a property crime is going to be put in a queue behind you, meaning the wait times for actually getting through to the cops can stretch to 45 minutes. (Although no one knows exactly how long it can take, because unlike emergency responses, no one at the city tracks how long victims of “low-level” crimes actually wait for a response.)

“The public understands it’s not a priority 911 call, but they still want the 911 type of response,” Harrell told SPD Chief Operating Officer Mike Wagers and others from the department. “It frustrates folks because number one, they’re victimized by crimes, and number two, they don’t feel like they’re getting any response.”

Wagers said that after public complaints to that end—including that “calling SPD is worse than calling Comcast”—the department is looking into the possibility of setting up an entirely different set of dispatchers to take calls about theft and other low-level crimes.

Council Member Sally Bagshaw was skeptical.

“I'm concerned we’re not able to move quickly enough on this," she said during the committee meeting. "We on the council have been giving the police department a lot of resources over the years. I have a sense the Nordstrom-quality service people want when they call the police department is not going to get there without some sort of a real transition, a change in what it is that we’re looking for. I just would really like to focus on that sense of, if I call the police department—even if it’s a non-emergency—knowing somebody actually cares when they answer the phone. What’s it gonna take?”

Wagers was non-committal: “We’re looking at reallocating current resources for a better experience [when citizens call in] … Improving the user experience is something the chief has asked us to do in 2015.”

We’ll see. And as for the rest of 2014... Good luck! (Maybe this convicted criminal's advice can help you.)

Meanwhile, Harrell is also pushing three laws directed at property crime—specifically, stolen jewelry—for next year. Current law says pawnshops and used goods stores have to track the identity of anyone who sells them jewelry, according to Harrell's office, but the councilman wants stores to also take photos of every piece of jewelry they buy in case officers are trying to track down something specific. For cellphones and tablets, Harrell's proposal would require stores to pay sellers by check rather than in cash.

Also on Harrell's wish list: New city penalties against stores that buy from people on the "No Buy" list (an SPD-created list of people convicted of property crimes) and a requirement that anyone convicted of burglary have a GPS tracker installed in the vehicle they used during the crime.