The police are clearly pillocks, but it's a bit much to blame the lady who phoned them up. Presumably she didn't know her neighbour by sight, which is common enough.

If you see two men you don't recognise breaking into a neighbour's house, the right thing to do surely is to phone the cops. Wouldn't exactly be a neighbourly thing to do to shrug, and say "Well, for all I know it might be the man who lives there. Nothing to do with me."