i had a bike stolen out of the garage years ago. The local PD took a report and that was that. Then, near the end of December, I get a call from them. I was excited, thinking they'd found it. Nope. They wanted to know if I'd found it. I told them that, not having powers of arrest, or qualified immunity and, being otherwise employed, I was not actively investigating the case.
Turns out, there's not enough chance of them finding anything to bother actually investigating, but there is enough chance that the victim will have stumbled across some form of resolution that they task an employee with cold calling all recent (this went on for about 3 years) theft victims in the hope that they'd found their property at a pawnshop, or cousin Eddie had confessed to nicking it, near the end of the year so they can "close" a few cases and juke their stats.