This reminds me of a (probably apocryphal) story a South African friend of mine told me once about the state of policing down there in the late nineties / early noughties.
The story goes that a man wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of burglars looting his garage. Given the occurences of aggravated robberies in SA at the time, often involving guns, he didn't want to confront the miscreants himself, and so called his local police department.
Apparently since no actual violence had been done at this point, the police-person to whom he was speaking claimed that they had no free units to come and attend, and that they'd send a car round in the morning to collect evidence. At this point the call ended.
The man who was being burgled was understandably unimpressed with this, thought about what he could do, and then rang the police back.
"Don't worry about the burglars here. I shot them." he says.
Within minutes his house is surrounded by police cars, and the burglars are under arrest.
The commander of the responding officers says to the man "I thought you said you shot them?"
The man replies "I thought you said you had no units free?"
Is trespassing to retrieve stolen property still trespassing?