When Heather Heinke couldn't unlock the front door of her northwest Houston home one spring night and then went around back, child in tow, to open the rear door, she was shocked to find household items strewn all over the place. Then she spotted thieves still at work.

"Three or four figures were in my house," Heinke recalled. "I had my kid with me. I got in the car and drove to the end of the cul de sac and called police."

Houston police officers arrived some 15 minutes later, and after going inside, they told her it was OK to come in, too. The thieves were gone.

The crew had stripped her 3-bedroom home of nearly anything of seeming value, and not just expensive electronics such as a TV, a laptop computer and cameras.

"Everything - all my son's clothes, his cologne, I am just trying to give you a picture of how far they went," Heinke said. "They cut through the bag of my dad's ashes - I don't know what they were looking for. ... They had been in there a long time."

Officers told her there wasn't much they could do, other than to report her crime to the burglary division, Heinke said. They gave her an incident number and quickly left. Although the thieves left behind a set of car keys, officers didn't dust for fingerprints, or collect for DNA testing, Heinke said.

Heinke called police repeatedly, checking for any developments in the 2013 case. She says police never called back. As of Friday, HPD officials were still searching their files and not able to determine whether her case had been assigned for investigation.

Heinke's experience is not unusual in the nation's fourth-largest city. A recent HPD staffing study says that 15,000 burglaries and thefts, 3,000 hit-and-run crashes and 3,000 assaults were simply set aside last year without a follow-up investigation. Houston police commanders told researchers they didn't have enough staff to review the cases, even those with promising leads.

"It seems like (crime has) increased, and to (the point of) not being able to leave your home in a peaceful state of mind," Heinke said. "You kind of feel helpless ... you feel you're out there exposed, like you're out there on your own."

The report's finding that thousands of crimes aren't being fully investigated, although it may not be unique to Houston as a major city, has angered citizens, civil rights groups and victims and surprised some City Council members. The disclosure came shortly after the Police Department in April disciplined eight homicide detectives for either ignoring or conducting shoddy investigations into nearly two dozen deaths.

Chief: Understaffed

Last week, Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland defended his officers at a City Council meeting, saying his department was understaffed. Officers cannot and shouldn't investigate every crime reported to them, the chief said. Instead, McClelland said violent crimes are the priority.

The tally of unworked cases came as no surprise to former Houston police investigators, former Police Chief C.O. Bradford and union officials.

They described a daily triage by Houston police lieutenants and sergeants, who review reports of new crimes and determine which have no leads or "solvability factors." Then, the supervisors assign what they consider the most solvable and egregious crimes to investigators. The others, despite having leads, are simply "suspended" and may be investigated if they are linked to another crime.

Mike Knox, a former gang investigator for the Police Department, said he's surprised there were only 15,000 burglary and theft cases that were not investigated.

"I'm sure HPD would love to investigate every single case, but we just don't have the manpower and money to do that. So we go after the ones who are doing the most harm," Knox said.

Bradford, who resigned as chief in 2003 and now serves as a city councilman, noted there are fewer police on the force today than when he was in command.

"There's not enough personnel," he said. "You only have so many investigators in the burglary and theft division."

The researchers hired to study HPD's staffing noted that while Houston has a lower staffing ratio than many large city police departments, such data is relevant but not all-telling. Major cities in the Northeast that have urban centers that developed "vertically," and are denser, have traditionally had higher ratios of police officers. Southwestern cities that have developed horizontally are less dense and tend to have lower ratios.

Houston's police-to-citizen ratio of 2.3 officers for every 1,000 residents is lower than those of Chicago (4.7), New York City (5.1), Detroit (4.4.) and Washington, D.C. (6.3.).

Crime Stoppers ready

Rania Mankarious, executive director of Crime Stoppers of Houston, said she is frustrated that more investigators don't call on the nonprofit agency to help them solve cases. HPD is the agency's major sponsor, but she said some investigators don't want to go through the "hassle" of providing information about unsolved cases.

Others are not familiar with the services provided by Crime Stoppers, which have led to the solving of 30,000 felony cases in three decades of operation.

"I'm angry in the sense that we're a free resource, this is all we do, and we need to be utilized," Mankarious said, adding that cash rewards paid for information are funded by probation fees.

Rebecca Riley, 63, said she never heard back from police ab0ut her hit-and-run case. On Riley's way back to her Oak Forest home one afternoon last September, another driver made an illegal turn, causing a collision.

Riley followed the driver, noting the make and model of the vehicle - a Chrysler 300 - as well as the license plate. She filed a report at an HPD substation.

"I thought because I got the license plate number (that) maybe they'll be able to do something," Riley said. Her insurance company was able to track down the driver, so surely police could, Riley thought.

Weeks, then months, went by; she never heard from anyone.

"When I heard about that report, I thought, 'well, I'm one of those 3,000 hit-and-runs,' " Riley said, referring to the city study. "I know that compared to people getting killed and other stuff, it doesn't seem that important to them, but it's important to you."

HPD spokesman John Cannon said investigators sent Riley a letter asking for informatione. Riley said she never received it.

Even though Riley reported her case to police, she felt uncertain they would do much. About five years ago, Riley said, her husband's truck was burglarized in the driveway of their home and the culprit walked away with almost all of his tools.

But the couple then had little evidence to provide to officers when they made their report and it came as no surprise that the case yielded no results. This time, though, Riley noted that she provided a lead on the suspect and a license plate number.

"I really didn't expect that much," she said. "And I got what I expected."

She said she is aware that her hit-and-run case is not of a serious consequence. She was not hurt and the damage to her car was significant - roughly $2100 - but it was not extreme. Although she says she is aware that police are understaffed, she wishes police would have done something more. Even just a phone call letting her know that they were trying to work on her case.

"That would have made me feel better," she said.

No contact from police

Houston police have a crime victim advocate on staff, but they declined a request by the Chronicle to interview him.

The staffing report that two organizations put together for HPD, which was delivered to the City Council's public safety committee on Monday, made suggestions on how several operational divisions could address staffing issues. The report's authors said adding 27 investigators to the burglary and theft division would lead to a 25 percent increase in the number of cases with leads that are investigated. In 2012, HPD reported 26,630 burglaries and 67,978 thefts.

Christine Douglas, 29, would like to see more officers assigned to investigate cases. Last July, cameras that she and her fiancé installed at their southwest Houston town house showed a man stealing a package from the porch.

Douglas said she recognized the thief as a friend of neighbors, and she told the officer who took her report. Even then the officer told her that the likelihood of her case being investigated was slim.

"It appears an investigator did not get assigned to this case," Cannon said..

She said the experience was frustrating. She said it wouldn't bother her if small thefts like hers were not investigated by police as long as their time was being devoted to more severe crimes. But in reading about the study, Douglas doesn't feel assured.

"If there are thousands of (uninvestigated) cases, I'm sure they are not all minor like mine," she said. "That's just ridiculous."