Step 1: Call the Police
Vandalism is a crime, which means you should report it to local police. If possible, don’t touch damaged buildings or vehicles — if cleanup is necessary, grab a pair of gloves to prevent contaminating the scene with your own fingerprints. Try to get a sense of what happened and when; take a look at parking lot security footage, internal cameras and do a quick walk-around to discover the extent of the damage. If there’s no sign of the vandals on-site, find the non-emergency number for your local police and give them a call.
In a perfect world, responding officers are able to easily locate fingerprints that are on file in their criminal database, but in most cases, this isn’t the outcome. Nonetheless, making the call to police is a critical step since ongoing investigations could help link multiple vandalism incidents and your insurance company will require a police report to process your claim.