And sometimes you have to hunt them down yourself so that they can make restitution...it's amazing how pliant they can become when you track them down at their business. Had to do this with a hit and run. Since the person was from another town, the local police couldn't do much, other than send a letter. It was up to me to track the person down and make it in her best interest to come clean. Took me a few days of detective work trying to get the person's physical address and insurance info, until I found out in an off the cuff conversation with an insurance agent in her aread that the person owned a business. Suddenly there was great interest in settling the matter, and all sorts of apologies. That was lucky...because I had figured out where the vehicle was parked. My next planned move was to get her insurance by breaking out a window and rummaging around for the insurance card.

In the U.S. most "minor" crimes like this are ignored. If you report them, you might not even get a police report out of it. The hit and run person wasn't even charged with anything. Car theft is not even a big deal in Texas...unless you have a weapon. I reported one of those once (they stole a cop's wife's car, while it was warming up.) They didn't use a weapon, but they had one in their possession when they were apprehended at their high school parking lot. Those boys did some time in the pen.

A friend of mine had his jeep stolen while he was in a convenience store. The clown who took it tried to run him down and there was a witness--which got the fool an attempted murder conviction and some serious time in pen. The funny part is that the idiot took off so fast that his partner fell out, and my friend caught the unlucky passenger and beat the crap out of the guy. He really enjoyed "subduing" the fellow to make sure he couldn't leave before the sheriff arrived.