Reddit reviews Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-free Arguments
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>I worry about the kinds of logical fallacies that I'm missing. I want to pick up a text that will give me a good introduction to formal logic.
Generally, fallacies occur in informal logic, or critical thinking. Technically yes, a mistake in formal logic does constitute a fallacy, but those don't come up nearly as often. Moreover, learning formal logic comes with a potential risk. In most systems taught in universities and introductory texts, you end up learning bivalent logic in which every proposition gets treated as true or false. Habitual immersion in such a system can lead to black and white thinking when students fail to see the system as a tool and identifiy it with the whole of "correct thinking."
I think you might get more mileage out of a good critical thinking book. I wanted to recommend Attacking Faulty Reasoning by T. Edward Damer, which reads like an encyclopedia of fallacies and how to combat them, but apparently it costs a fortune. (WTF! I paid like $20 for it back in '94!)
Of course, reporting to the police is good too. There is also a line for what to report. If you witness a drug deal or are offered drugs, it might be something to report. If you just see some guy who looks sketchy, that's not the best use of a police's time.
But, the problems you state is the reason it's good to get politicians involved.
When police forces aren't under the watch of political leaders, and consequently, the public, you can get degradation of their services. Complacency, thoughtlessness, filing away tips into black holes; these are all symptoms of an out-of-touch police centre with no outside stimulus. When they understand that political leaders are getting involved, it makes them more self-concious and will also weed out bad officers.
You also say that police reporting for smaller things is a resource hog, but it's not really the case. It doesn't really take much more work time to get officers to record tips. In fact, that work can be passed off to cheaper office secretaries.
The idea that small details and reports don't become useful until after the crime doesn't hold much water either, because of the steady rate in which criminals raise the stakes. Almost all the big crimes happen after a string of lesser crimes. It's also a big win to catch a criminal before he commits too many crimes, because they can be dealt with before they become pathological.
And even after the crime, more information gives the courts more to go on, so they can more accurately asses what should happen after a charge.
Also, 9/11 is a bad example. They're such different scenarios that you can't really apply one to the other confidently. When you make comparisons, look for the most similar examples you can find, like another city's statistics. Using vastly different events to shed light on municipal problems is inaccurate and can lead to wrong conclusions.
Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you haven't had a lot of research into critical thinking. I'd highly recommend you read a few books on it. You can rent both of these at the public library.
There's even a kickstarter on a college level book on it. I can send you a copy when it's done.