RSS Feed
|
The Acorn - Thousand Oaks Acorn Moorpark Acorn - Simi Valley Acorn |
|
|
|||||
|
The growing viciousness of graffiti
Debra Varnado, the council's assistant executive director, said the summit gave Ventura County's 10 cities an opportunity to learn from each other, work together and establish a communication network. She said graffiti and the other crimes it brings have affected cities large and small across the county. Leaders of the pack Oxnard and Ventura, the cities hardest hit, are leading the county in aggressively identifying and arresting taggers. Both cities charge first-time offenders a $1,000 fine. The penalty doubles if the tagger strikes a second time in Ventura. Gang-related graffiti can carry even stiffer charges and penalties. Oxnard had fined vandals only $100 but changed the civil ordinance in 2005, the same year the city formed the graffiti task force. It wasn't until this year that Ventura began fining taggers, prior to that the city had no civil fines on the books. Police in both cities said stiffer fines are often an effective tool in reducing graffiti. Any efforts to halt graffiti must include parental involvement, police and other experts said. Oxnard and Ventura police said their tough stance against taggers is warranted. Officials said they're seeing tagging crews acting as gangs would- subjecting new recruits to initiation rites and defending their territory with weapons. Oxnard spends more than $1 million a year- $800,000 in the graffiti removal program and another $400,000 for code enforcement- costs which include two full-time graffiti investigators. Cyndi Hookstra, Oxnard's graffiti task force administrator, said graffiti cleanup is a top priority for both residents and the City Council. But to be effective as a county, Hookstra said all cities should update their ordinances and increase their fines to at least $1,000 per marking, because taggers who live in one city often strike in another. Oxnard's aggressive efforts are apparently paying off. Oxnard police said graffiti-related calls are down from last year- so far police have responded to 966 graffiti-related calls, compared with approximately 2,000 calls last year. Ventura is also taking a more serious view of tagging. After a spike in incidents last year- police responded to twice the number of graffiti calls from the year before- Ventura appointed a fulltime investigator, updated its 30yearold ordinance to include higher fines and more than doubled its graffitiremoval budget. The city has also committed to removing graffiti within 24 hours or less. Camarillo Senior Dep. Jason Hendren, a full-time graffiti investigator, said that, although Camarillo hasn't seen an increase in graffiti crimes, taggers are becoming more violent. A recent shooting and stabbing incident involved taggers fighting over territory, he said. In the first six months of 2007, police worked 180 tagging cases compared to 105 the year before, and arrests went up from 51 to 94 during the same period. However, city cleanup costs for the same time period decreased. Hendren said police think that better reporting of graffiti incidents accounts for the discrepancy. To get a truer picture of graffiti in Camarillo, police began classifying graffiti separately from other acts of vandalism late last year, Hendren said. Police rely on video surveillance as an effective tool to identify and apprehend the 20 tagging crews operating in Camarillo. Three different taggers were caught spray painting a Camarillo church in one night and two taggers hitting a store in three days, Hendren said. He said police have identified a tagger as young as 14 years old. Moorpark Moorpark tagging crews mainly hit in areas along the railroad tracks and are relentless and bold, said David Lascher, community development analyst. For example, every night taggers hit one particular business, even though it's only about 300 yards from the police station, Lascher said, adding that the owner paints over the markings each time. Moorpark tagging crews are generally nonviolent, but Lascher said he knows firsthand what taggers are capable of. When he worked in the San Gabriel Valley, Lascher said he saw a person bleed to death on a sidewalk after being shot over territory. Law enforcement said although taggers may be persistent, graffiti should be cleaned up immediately or else the problem will worsen. Police in the larger cities said they subscribe to the Broken Window Theory, which advocates that criminal acts, no matter how small, will spread and escalate if they aren't addressed immediately. Simi Valley Lt. Greg Riegert said tagging incidents in Simi Valley skyrocketed to 2,388 in 2006 and 3,089 so far this year from a 12-year low of 526 in 2002. Recently, two tagging crews caused more than $60,000 in damage, Riegert said. "This is a major cost to the community, and it's dangerous," he said. Riegert said tagging crews are generally not "the menacing, gang type." The latest tagging crew that police have identified is made up of bored, white, middleclass juveniles whose male and female members are outcasts in school, the police lieutenant said. A fairly recent addition to the graffiti removal program is tennis shoes draped across an overhead electrical wire, Riegert said. Whether it's a gang sign, an indication of drug activity or "Shoeffiti," the city removes it, he said. The city is taking graffiti seriously. Simi Valley police have a more aggressive reporting and documenting system, and the city recently added additional staff to its sevendayaweek graffiti removal program. Simi Valley spends $250,000 a year on graffiti removal, he said. In investigating taggers, police now consult with school resource officers- uniformed police stationed at high schools- and scour online social networks popular with teens for leads. Graffiti removal is quick, and the city aggressively seeks restitution from offenders as well as tougher criminal charges. Simi Valley also has an active community gang task force, an advisory body to the City Council, and operates a number of productive programs for young people. Countywide The district attorney's office is also recognizing the impact graffiti has on a city and is taking a more consistent approach in prosecuting the vandals, said James Ellison, chief assistant district attorney. When filing charges, the DA's office now considers the type of instrument used and the amount of space the markings take up- elements that determine cleanup costs, he said. A spokesperson for the Ventura County Sheriff's Department said the department plans to buy a stateoftheart video surveillance system soon that will tie into certain areas hit by taggers. Volunteers would monitor the live-feed camera system at a sheriff's station. The summit concluded with law enforcement and justice officials agreeing to share intelligence and educate the public on how severe the problem of graffiti has become. Wally Bobkiewicz, interim executive director of the Ventura Council of Goverments, said his organization plans to develop an information exchange system on prevention and other graffitirelated topics for the cities. |
for larger version       |
||||
)