I honestly hate people like you.
When I was a kid, I barely saw a policeman on the streets either. It was such an event that such things stuck in the mind. Things have not got worse. In fact, there are now more visible, audible and present police cars than ever before (sorry, does that mean you can't speed like a little child disobeying daddy's rules? ).
I live in a London borough with over 1500 streets contained within 100 square miles. Within that there is a police station and five contact points and just under 400 officers (including PCSO's, part-timers, etc.) serving just under a quarter-of-a-million people. At least half of those will be dealing with prisoners, in court, on training, at events, doing paperwork etc.at any one time but that's 625 people per officer at best. Probably, what, 10 streets worth or so? Each officer is dealing with all the crime that happens within 10 streets. Doesn't sound like much? At current rates, and averaged over the borough including the high streets, the pubs, etc., they don't have time to walk around pointlessly as there's always something to respond to. Walking around pointlessly doesn't reduce crime figures either. It also means they are unavailable to the majority of calls that come their way because they can't get to them or some other officer has to drive out to get them.
"Bobbies on the beat" were idle. They were doing literally nothing. The chances of them spotting a crime in progress are precisely zip. They were there because there was nothing to respond to but they were on-job, or to appease people's feeling of confidence. In case you miss it, they were always wearing day-glo yellow things and pointy helmets which doesn't stop crime but makes them easy to see coming - so anyone who wanted to, say, burgle would wait a few moments while they walked past and then do it anyway.
Contrary to popular belief, they do not have the time to trawl CCTV either. They quite like me as I'm an IT guy who works for schools and whenever they'd needed something, I was able to spend the time to get stuff from CCTV for them because they simply do not have the time to watch, evaluate, track and export videos from different CCTV systems. And they get crap like parents calling in police to schools because one of the teachers refused to let their little darling enter a classroom threatening to beat the hell out of another student and the teacher had the gall to keep them out the classroom with minimal force.
You want police on the beat? Stop having football matches. Stop whinging about speed cameras rather than "real officers". Pay your speeding fines or, better, stop speeding. Increase your council tax or lobby your local council to increase their portion of funds in a way not detrimental to other services.
And then you will have paid for a ratio that allows them to be idle, say, 10% of the time and you can feel happy at seeing them walk past somewhere that 10 minutes earlier or later was/is burgled just the same anyway.
The Italian side of my family also worry about us because they ALWAYS hear sirens in the background when we speak to them on the phone. In their rural location, seeing a policeman or ambulance is a once-a-year thing and every gathers to look on. In ours, they go past so often that we do not hear them any more, we tune them out. That sounds bad until you realise it's not gunshots, or violence, or robberies that you hear - it's the police responding at speed to them. And often enough that the Italians worry for us and panic every time they hear a siren in the background (even when we're walking through London, ffs!) responding to a call several miles away.
Stop giving the police a bad rap. You want to know how bad they are? A neighbour of mine was worried because of a recent burglary in the area (that wasn't discovered until hours later when the owners got home). The police blanketed the area with advice leaflets to raise awareness. The neighbour pulled up outside his house at midnight and thought he saw our curtains twitch. He misremembered something about us going away, and instead pulled over to block our driveway, and called the police. So this is a very lax, suspect report of a possible burglary but also maybe just a cat on a windowsill (actually the latter).
I have CCTV of it. Within 3 minutes, a police car is there (silent, obviously). They talk to the guy briefly. Check FOUR HOUSES, gardens, over the fence, looking for anything suspicious, and then ring my doorbell while officers cover the rear. Actually, we were in. They asked for ID, because - yes - I could have BEEN the burglar. They verified it all. They checked the area again.
I'll be f***ed if that isn't the response you need. Three damn minutes based on a slight suspicion.
P.S. I do not work for the police. I wouldn't want to. What a crappy, unappreciated job for pathetic money. And every time I've ever needed to call them, they come running. In the most serious case (the only 999 call I ever had to make) there were sirens approaching before I even hung up. In the other case, there were police at the door in moments of my neighbours reporting burglaries to check for suspects, gather evidence, etc. and another time police in the depths of Scotland responding to my calls from London, to go stand in the snow with a stranded car with my wife+child in until the recovery van decided to turn up (and they basically FORCED the RAC to respond immediately after we'd already waited over an hour for them).