From the other point of view, the abundance of stories when the high-profile criminal was catched doing something stupid, and the relative absence of ones when the criminal was catched in some clever way may mean the law enforcement is doing their job poorly.
s/catched/caught/g
Operation Flagship in 1985 was one of the clever ones -- US marshalls nabbed 101 wanted fugitives on a single day at a stadium, where they were expecting to receive two free tickets to an NFL game...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Flagship