Two years ago now I was burglarized and my gun vault was stolen out of my basement with all of my long rifles in it. The cops did a very superficial investigation and closed the case. To answer your first question of course I had all the serial numbers and pics of the rifles in question… they were in the vault; I mean seriously who thinks robbers are going to take a 700# gun vault. I know, stupid me.
Well almost a year later I found one of my rifles at an Aurora pawn shop. I did what I was supposed to and called the police and went through the whole B.S. Only to have the officer tell me that without the serial number, a receipt blah, blah, blah. There was no way I was going to get my rifle back. I said well I don’t have that explained the reasons and said I do have brass fired through the rifle and the free bore measurement, and so on. He didn’t even so much as take any of my brass, the rifle was left at the pawn shop for 2 weeks and he called me and told me I was lying to him and there was no way he would give me my gun. He further stated that he was going to contact the detective on my case and have him open an investigation into me as the person who stole my own guns.
My response was to tell him fine have me investigated I have nothing to hide, further anytime he wanted to come to my door and call me a liar he could come over. He lied about doing his job, but I am the liar here. In short don’t trust the police to find your stuff, they don’t want the right and legal owner to have their own stuff.