County graffiti summit gets tough with taggers
By Michelle Knight knight@theacorn.com

SAD SIGHT- This dog, tagged with toxic spray paint, was seen wandering the streets of Oxnard.

Increasing costs and a rise of violent crime prompted about 150 city, law enforcement and justice officials to call for a united approach in combating the growing problem of graffiti.

Officials met last week at the Camarillo Library at a summit sponsored by the Ventura Council of Governments, a 15-year-old regional planning and coordination cooperative.

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 apprehending taggers.

Both cities charge first-time offenders a $1,000 fine for every tag or marking. The penalty increases if the tagger is caught again. Gang-related graffiti can carry even stiffer charges and penalties.

For both cities that's an enormous jump. In 2005, Ventura and Oxnard fined vandals $50 per marking. Oxnard formed the graffiti task force the same year.

Police in both cities said stiffer fines are often an effective tool in getting the attention and cooperation of the tagger's parents. Any efforts to halt graffiti must include parental involvement, police and other experts said.

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 30year-old 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.

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, middle-class 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 state-of-the-art 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.