LAGG MEDIA posted on May 22, 2009 12:07
“It’s a huge problem rooted in poverty, homelessness, hopelessness and other social factors. I don’t think we really understand the ramifications of what appears to be a complex form of communicating,” said Brown She warns allowing graffiti to remain visible in a community sends a message “that this type of behavior is acceptable to residents and business owners.” In 2008 alone, San Bernardino police investigated over 755 graffiti related crimes in the city at a cost of $320,000. That price tag does not cover the costs incurred by the city’s newly established enforcement and removal program. But city police say several anti-graffiti initiatives are starting to bear fruit. In about a month, officers from the Special Enforcement Bureau’s Graffiti Task Force along with the county Housing Authority, conducted search warrants and compliance checks throughout the city. The sweep resulted in the arrest of 17 suspects for felony vandalism and 4 suspects for misdemeanor drug and vandalism charges.
Most of the suspects were juveniles involved in large scale tagging and defacing of property throughout the greater San Bernardino area according to Bureau Commander Lt. D. Harps.On March 20, officers from the Graffiti Task Force and Patrol arrested 4 juveniles for felony vandalism after they were caught defacing property during surveillance. Police arrested another 18 suspects on March 27.
On March 28, a Riverside man attending a concert at the National Orange Show was arrested during the concert for felony vandalism, after causing over $15,000 worth of damage (graffiti) to the Orange Show buildings and surrounding areas. During their investigation officers found photos of the graffiti that the suspect had in his digital camera and were able to link him to a local tagging crew.
Police say a popular trend among taggers is to post what they consider ‘art form’ on Internet social networking sites. Increasingly cities are battling the problem of vandalism head on with a hitech system that analyses and tracks graffiti and its perpetrators. Rather than simply obliterate the graffiti, the system keeps a permanent record of it which allows police to compile a database of offenders. The surveillance has angered some parents and privacy advocates. They say the data can easily be abused by aggressive police tracking youthful offenders for minor crimes.
Experts say while images taggers create may not necessarily be gang related, research shows that most taggers hope to join gangs and use tagging as a way to gain the attention of gang members and leaders. The more often their monikers appear in different locations, the more publicity they receive.Tagging police say may fill an even deeper void for many disadvantaged youths without a strong sense of personal identity.Not long ago, the word graffiti conjured images of innocent messages, such as ‘Be My Love written across a heart shape or Class of 69. Today such simple and innocuous ‘scribblings’ are symbols of hatred, racism, and gang warfare. “They want to belong. They want to put their work in lights. Unfortunately where some people see art,” said Lt. Harps, “we see obscene, racist and threatening.