With your experiences, what course of action do you suggest?
That depends on where you live, and local PD's attitude towards property crime.
In NYC, police give ZERO priority to minor property crime, so submitting video to them is a waste of your time and theirs. Insurance company will not take video into account without a police report. Even with a police report, this is a comprehensive claim and you are out of the deductible.
The only practical upside to a Tesla owner would be IFF the perpetrator was identified (by whatever means), AND if the damage was large enough for the insurance company to attempt to subrogate the cost of the repairs from that individual. In other words, <0.1% of traversing that branch of the decision tree.
So I don't waste my time or battery juice to run Sentry Mode.
Walnut Creek, which I happen to know well, is an upscale suburban town. There is a chance local PD is more interested and bored to investigate property crimes. But the only way PD would get a chance to do something about it, is if the OP was planning to file a police report and prompt them to investigate this event. Since OP wasn't planning to pursue that course of action, my question was - so what now?
From my perspective, the video recorded by Sentry Mode is worthless, if not put to use.
So, why waste battery on recording it?
Would you just give up and disable sentry mode, lay down and roll over with your belly exposed? What would you suggest as a valuable member of society?
Vandalism sucks. I'm not a fan.
If one gathers the evidence to discourage it - then act on it.
If one has no intention to act on the video evidence - then don't waste battery charge to run Sentry Mode. Sentry Mode becomes pure waste of electrons.
Kind of logical, isn't it?
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P.S.: I've had greenie bicycle aficionados knock off/break side mirrors from a row of cars parked overnight (including that of my Tesla), drunks jumping and dancing on roofs of cars, people jumping (falling?) off Brooklyn bridge walkway landing on my hood (leaving bloodied hand prints), and people backing into front/back of my cars while parking by braille, Not just bumper rash, but folks backing into your car hard enough to do damage to the sheet metal. Fun times!