Police wouldn’t be remotely interested in something like that on private property as it would be a civil matter
Flat out wrong. As in, entirely nonsense. Keying a car is a criminal matter, not a civil matter. It in fact carries a prison sentence of up to 6 months if the damage is more than £5000, three months if it’s less than £5000.
No idea how you arrived at the conclusion that vandalism (a criminal offense) becomes a civil matter “because it’s on private property”, that’s now how laws work. It would make any damage to your property automatically a civil matter, including arson. Arson is covered by the same law as keying your car, in case you didn’t know, so if one’s a civil matter, the other one’s too.
I wasn’t suggesting anything. I am talking from experience. We went through this, albeit not our own car but my mother in laws Aygo, and not keyed but the door/mirror kicked at night, parked at our train station (which is also private property). We went to the police, they got the footage, they figured out which out of the group of 5 drunk kids kicked the door, and asked us if we’d like to press charges.
They of course won’t start a manhunt over it, but they absolutely (have to) investigate. If the police, as @West said, tells you to jog on and go to your insurance, you file a complaint since it’s an abhorrent refusal to investigate a crime. And again, vandalism is a crime, not a civil matter. Under no circumstance does it become a civil matter.
Don’t take it from me.
Here’s lawyers pointing it out.
Here’s the RAC pointing it out.
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/how-to/my-cars-been-keyed-what-should-i-do/
Here’s the law.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/criminal-damage
And lastly, here’s someone who got caught keying.
Woman ordered to pay damages after she was caught keying car on CCTV
Maybe we got “lucky” that we don’t have a lazy and/or incompetent police force/district down here, fact of the matter is though, if they tell you to move on, they’re not doing their job.
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