Almost everyone has egged someone’s car or lit a bag of dog poo on fire and set it on someone’s porch, but sometimes it can be taken too far.

DeKalb police Lt. Jim Kayes said gang graffiti, putting a brick through a car or house window and slashing tires are types of vandalism.

“Tire vandalism is pretty rare,” Kayes said. He did say that in the NIU area, the police department receives a lot of reports of bricks flying through windows.

Contrary to this, Lee Blankenship, owner of the Village Commons Bookstore, 901 Lucinda Ave., said he did not know of any cars in the parking lot next to VCB being damaged in the five or six years he has been there.

“We’ve had several instances over the years of spray-painting, damaged signs, tires slashed and gasoline stolen out of vehicles,” Blankenship said.

He added that some cars parked in the back lot of the building have been damaged.

According to the DeKalb Police Department, there have been 713 instances of criminal damage to property and criminal defacement this year.

Criminal damage to property can include vehicles, damage to windows and broken taillights. Spray-painting falls under the criminal defacement category.

“I don’t think I’ve had a broken window in years,” Blankenship said.

In October, there were 100 cases of criminal damage to property and criminal defacement, while 83 cases were reported in September.

“We don’t have [vandalism] all the time,” Kayes said. “It comes and goes.”

Kayes considers a serious incident would have to be 10 or more car windows smashed.

Blankenship said most of the time they do not have a serious problem.

He cited a couple significant examples of vandalism at the store. One resulted in $1,000 worth of damage to clean up spray-paint damage, and another time, a sign cost almost $1,000 to replace after being stolen.

“I’m in the process of putting cameras outside of the building,” Blankenship said. He said he already has cameras inside the store and hopes the addition of the outside cameras will deter potential criminals.