The only points I will agree on is that there's no magic bullet and prevention is better. Parking a vehicle in the garage is better than leaving it outside. But, most people have more vehicles than garage space and/or their garage has bikes, grills, sporting equipment, boxes, excess furniture, wood working equipment etc in it. So one or no car may fit in the garage. Whether you have one or two outside. Problem remains.
Maybe dmoore could clarify where exactly his area is? So that we can avoid moving there, if the police is really that useless.
Fighting crime can be a difficult endeavor. Many/most small crimes go unsolved, until a perp is caught that can be held responsible for a string of crimes. Sometimes luck is involved in that. Most often there's no evidence. Nothing appears to be happening on the victim's side due to lack of evidence, description, witnesses. In that regard some video footage is better than no footage. If everybody sticks their head in the sand, then nobody will ever even produce anything that can lead to even a description of a person or vehicle. Especially if as you say the criminals are local to the area, then having some details leads to actionable data and patrols can be informed. The description could be so vague as to be 1/10th of the population ... 6ft male with pale 2 door pickup truck. Still better than nothing. More details. Better reaction.
You don't need to light up 2 acres. Just a couple dozen feet around a property will do. You can't capture it all. I may wish to record the criminal who parks next door, hits the neighbor's house, walks over here and down the street, house to house, ... but then I'm at the point that I need a mile of fencing, creating entry points with surveillance, trip wires in the woods, guard dogs, ...
I think in our area, there's been plenty of success with local businesses even with poor analog cameras, that once some footage of hold-up hits the local news, there's plenty of tips and the perp gets identified.
Now if you want to talk about doing time for the crime ... that's a whole other ball game.
But don't just go bashing a surveillance camera when it is the #1 thing that could help identify a person or vehicle. Because when there's no witness, who's going to give a description. How detailed and accurate is a description? ... A picture can be a 1000 words.
As far as the local police not doing ANYTHING at all. Sounds like you may need new leadership.