$500 was the damages that they were caught doing. Not the total damages they caused. If every "empathetic" person volunteers to pay $2 every time someone wants graffiti on their property removed, regardless of how often graffiti keeps reappearing, then maybe the DA wouldn't feel a need to prosecute.
Accused of causing.
What? after reading your first sentence many times it’s basically saying you’re of the mind that a criminal very likely has way more crimes that we’ve just haven’t seen so they should be prosecuted heavily for the one we did see just to make sure we get our prosecution-bang for the buck?