What sort of investigation do you think they'll do? My experience is the cops aren't able to do much, and won't investigate for something equivalent to taking toothpaste from a Target.

When someone did a dent-and-run into my car in a parking lot, the police didn't investigate. I got an incident report from them, to send to my insurance. In that case the police report gives the insurance company a way to handle possible fraud on my part.

During the night someone went down the street and poked a hole in car tires, including one of mine. I didn't bother calling the police since I didn't think they could do anything. I needed to get going, so put on the spare and left.

You think a police investigation could have done something?

Flipping it around, when I was a kid on a bike I ran into someone's side view mirror and knocked it off. I was so scared about getting punished by my parents that I left. If the police investigated, they never caught me, and more importantly, my parents never found out.

The only time we ever called the cops was when visiting friends in a small town. I came out to find a car window had been shattered, and we found a BB among the broken glass. The cops came for that one. Turns out some bored teens were going around shooting things with a BB gun. That one actually went to trial and I got court-ordered compensation.

But that was car damage plus serial gun crime, and not typical car damage.