Clean as a whistle! - Riverview Park cleaned up!

"Yes, they did clean up the graffiti (and I noticed from your website that you must have taken a trip up there yourself!). I am so happy to see that it was done, and everything looked very nice. In fact, when we went up to look at it there was a group of people having a birthday party with a little BBQ. It was nice to see". -BK

All of that offensive graffiti at Riverview Park is history. Nice work! Thank you to the City and to others that helped make it happen. Working together, we can make sure that Benicia remains a great place to live.

- Ross Sagun

The Broken Window Theory

Graffiti fighters gather to share ideas, tools

taking on taggers

By John Simerman
Contra Costa Times

Article Launched: 08/01/2008 07:37:39 PM PDT

Click photo to enlarge

A pedestrian walks past a mural made of graffiti on International Boulevard and 29th Avenue...

SANTA ROSA — Graffiti tends to tick people off, but for John Rose it goes much deeper.

The Aussie bird-dogs it everywhere his eyes land — on soundwalls, traffic signs, the side of a building far across a shopping center parking lot.

"I cannot go anywhere without seeing graffiti. It's an illness. It's incurable," he said. "I hate graffiti with a vengeance. I'll do anything to get rid of this waste of time and blight that's devaluing our properties."

Rose gladly shares his angry passion, not to mention his foolproof three-step process to get rid of it — modestly named "World's Best Graffiti Removal System."

Which is why he joined dozens of anti-graffiti arms merchants this week at a hotel conference center where 300 officials from California and beyond shared strategies on a problem they say is growing in many cities, with potentially violent consequences.

Among them were police or city officials from across the East Bay, including Antioch, Richmond, Union City and Alameda County.

The two-day conference showcased some notably sophisticated, and in some cases chemically potent, approaches to graffiti and etching in window glass. Aggressive agencies are deploying GPS tracking systems, cameras triggered by motion sensors, and spray-on coatings to make graffiti removal easier.

In some areas, including Southern California, enforcement sweeps have led to jail time and prison sentences as high as two

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years for persistent "taggers."

Under the "broken window theory" of crime prevention, swiftly erasing eyesores such as graffiti discourages more of it and removes what some criminals view as an invitation for more serious trouble in a neighborhood.

"If you leave it up, you're giving up," said Fresno police Sgt. Todd Miller. He and others said the stakes have grown. Tagging, or spray-painting an identifying mark, can often prompt violent clashes, they said. Miller credited graffiti as the spark for two murders and a stabbing in his city in the past month.

Deputies in an Alameda County Sheriff's Office anti-graffiti program agreed, though they had not linked murders to graffiti. "We can attribute violent crime to graffiti. It's all territorial. They're marking spots," said Deputy Paul Liskey. "It increases tensions."

Liskey said it takes coordination among agencies and neighbors, but budget woes have hampered the county's ability to quickly remove graffiti.

Experts say gangs spray just a small fraction of graffiti, and more often it's individual "wannabe" taggers or "street teams" that may later morph into gangs. One police officer called a seeming lack of options for kids the biggest indicator in cities where the problem is rising.

"They're looking for fame, for recognition," said Kenneth Davis, a graffiti and gang specialist in Yonkers, N.Y. "That's a flag there's something going wrong in the household."

Richmond recently launched an anti-graffiti initiative, adding removal crews and enlisting residents across the city. The problem is particularly nettlesome in the city's Iron Triangle, Coronado and Belding Woods neighborhoods, said Trina Jackson, who coordinates the new program.

Jackson said she arrived at the conference anxious to hear how other cities use restitution — forcing taggers to pay for the damage — as a deterrent. "If the kids know they'll be penalized, that'll make a difference," she said. "Right now, they're getting away with it."

Part of the battle, experts said, is commitment from city officials, prosecutors, judges and community members. Some tread lightly because the taggers are juveniles, the crime seems relatively light and because, in some cases, they don't want to be seen as stifling the creativity of some young graffiti artists.

In Union City, Wayne Cruz fights a never ending battle. As the city's lone "graffiti buster," he drives around in a 16-foot trailer from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. each day, color-matching paint and covering up graffiti.

Sprays and surveillance can help, said Cruz, but there's nothing like meeting taggers and letting them know the deal: They spray, he takes away.

"I have an 800 number (for graffiti reports)," he said. "Taggers are actually calling now, saying 'Hey, someone tagged my wall.'"

Governor signs new graffiti law

New California graffiti law: Clean it up and keep it clean

Email Picture

Brian VanderBrug / Los Angeles Times

Judy Baca's "Hitting the Wall" Olympic women's marathon runner mural under the 4th Street bridge on the 110 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles is a victim of graffiti vandals. Caltrans has been painting over other murals in the area.

Gov. Schwarzenegger signs a law sponsored by the city of L.A. It requires convicted vandals to remove their scrawls and keep walls clean for a year.

By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 31, 2008

SACRAMENTO -- At the urging of Los Angeles officials alarmed about graffiti defacing the city's many murals, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a measure into law Wednesday that requires those convicted of the vandalism to remove the scrawls and, in some cases, keep the tagged surfaces clean for one year.

The law was welcomed by many officials as another tool to use against a recent explosion of graffiti, but some gang experts were worried that it might put the offenders in jeopardy if they had to cover up graffiti by other gang members.

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The measure applies to graffiti on any surface, including blank walls.

Los Angeles, which sponsored the legislation, has recorded a significant increase in graffiti in the last three years, from 25 million square feet of graffiti-stained surfaces in 2005 to 31.7 million in the year that ended June 30, said Paul Racs, director of the city's Office of Community Beautification.

Last year, the city received reports of graffiti at 653,520 locations, 40,000 more than the year before, he said.

Racs said graffiti was increasing partly because it is celebrated on the Internet.

"There are video games where the good guy is the tagger and the bad guy is the cop," he said. "Graffiti is also used in advertising, so young people are getting a dual message."

Artist Judy Baca, founder of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, has seen graffiti nearly cover her mural "Hitting the Wall" on the 110 Freeway downtown.

Baca said the city had cut funding for the creation and maintenance of murals.

"These kids don't have the possibility of being a muralist themselves," she said, so they angrily ruin murals with graffiti.

The measure makes it mandatory, instead of discretionary, for a court to order a defendant who is convicted of graffiti vandalism to clean up or repair the property when feasible. A judge could decide not to order a tagger to risk his life by keeping graffiti off a sign that hangs over the freeway.

The court also could order the defendant or a minor defendant's parents or guardians to keep the damaged property free of graffiti for up to one year.

"By having to clear up the mess, they would realize how much effort and cost is involved in tidying up after them," said Assemblyman Mike Davis (D-Los Angeles), author of the law.

Some gang experts said the requirement that young offenders remove others' graffiti could put them in harm's way.

"The cause for a lot of violence involves graffiti and either crossing it out or removing it," said Khalid Shah, director of Stop the Violence, a gang intervention program.

He said Homeboy Industries closed a program that put gang members to work removing graffiti after two young people were shot to death while cleaning walls.

patrick.mcgreevy@

latimes.com

You think graffiti is a minor crime? Think again...

Graffiti vandals turn violent in LA

By THOMAS WATKINS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — One man got stabbed. Another got shot in the chest. A 6-year-old boy was temporarily blinded when he was spray-painted in the face.

And they were the lucky ones among those who have had run-ins with graffiti "crews," or gangs.

Over the past 2 1/2 years in Southern California, three people have been killed after trying to stop graffiti vandals in the act. A fourth died after being shot while watching a confrontation between crews in a park.

"We have seen a marked increase in these graffiti-tagging gangs taking to weapons and fighting to protect their walls, their territory, their name," said Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Robert Rifkin.

Los Angeles County has battled graffiti for decades, spending $30 million a year to paint over or clean up the emblems, names and other images spray-painted on stores, concrete-lined riverbeds, rail lines, phone booths, buses, even police cars. On Wednesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law requiring convicted graffiti vandals to remove their scrawl.

For some taggers, protecting their work is akin to defending their names and their honor.

"If we see someone calling the police, then we target them," said Mario Garcia, 20, who describes himself as a former tagger trying to become a professional artist. "You are trying to stop me from what I live, what I believe in and what I breathe? We are not going to let no one get in the way."

Workers who remove the graffiti say they take caution if they find a crew at work. They wait until the taggers leave before cleaning up.

"We won't say anything to them," said Rogelio Flores, whose company Graffiti Busters contracts with Los Angeles to blast away the markings with high-pressure hoses. "We don't know what kind of weapons they have."

Police tell residents to resist the urge to confront graffiti crews.

"It's not worth the risk," Rifkin said. "Take a deep breath, back off and call law enforcement."

Some of the violence has been between rival crews, which are increasingly acting like street gangs. And some of the bloodshed has involved real street gangs that mark their turf with their names or emblems. But some of the victims have been innocents.

In an attack last month, two youths spray-painted the face and body of the 6-year-old boy who spotted them scribbling gang signs on a wall near Compton. The boy recovered from chemical burns to his eyes.

On the same day, a 51-year-old auto mechanic was shot in the chest in Los Angeles when he confronted two suspected gang members painting the wall of his shop.

Another man, Michael Lartundo, 26, was stabbed in the hand and arm after yelling at a group of graffiti vandals scrawling on a wall in March behind his brother's house in suburban Whittier.

"I just told them it ain't right," Lartundo recalled. "I said, 'If you are going to write on the wall, write on your own wall.'"

The most recent attack occurred July 15, when a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed after rival graffiti crews converged on a Los Angeles park for a fight. The victim was in a crowd of onlookers.

Last August, Maria Hicks, 58, was shot in the head and died after flashing her headlights and honking at a teenager spray-painting a wall near her home in Pico Rivera, a blue-collar suburb east of Los Angeles. Four people have been charged with murder.

Ten days after Hicks died, Seutatia Tausili, 65, was fatally shot and her grandson wounded when he told taggers to stop vandalizing a trash can outside their home in Hesperia in San Bernardino County. Three men were charged with murder.

Robert Whitehead was shot to death in 2006 in the Los Angeles County area of Valinda when he tried to keep taggers from marking a neighbor's garage. Investigators arrested one man with alleged ties to the Mexican Mafia, a prison gang.

Artist Dartagnan Curiel, 31, said he used to scrawl graffiti and grew sick of the violence. He now paints murals with positive messages as a way to speak out against the bloodshed in his Los Angeles neighborhood and to encourage graffiti vandals and gang members to lay down their arms.

"Why would you want to put spray paint on a kid's face?" he says. "We live in the same community. We are all in this hellhole together."

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Where is a skateboarder to go?

I had a skateboard when I was a kid. Didn't you? First came the steel-wheeled roller skates with the red leather straps. Then, the little red board with the steel wheels. Wow, was that a hit! Bigger than hula-hoops. Finally, I graduated to a real board with Chicago wheels that my dad bought for me at the local Sears Roebuck. Of course, a stone the size of a baby aspirin would send me flying but what fun it was? Those were the days my friends...

It would have been hard to imagine that someday (today) skateboarding would become a problem. Even more difficult to imagine would have been giving the issue any thought, especially at 12:30am. Nevertheless, here I am, some 40 years later, doing just that.

One just has to look at some of the graffiti to see that it has a "skateboarder" slant. "Skate or Die" is pretty clear to me. And 85 skateboard citations by the Benicia Police Department in the span of one month seems like more than an occasional boarder. I disagree with Chief Spagnoli's contention that "there is not necessarily a connection between skateboarding and criminal activity, specifically graffiti". There is not necessarily a connection between Benicia and graffiti, but we still have it, don't we?

Let's face it; Benicia isn't exactly a place that will set one's hair on fire, nor would we wish it to be. But when you take away one of the few really well-utilized distractions for kids (aka the Willow Glen skateboard park), what should we expect? [Answer: lots of bored kids on skateboards all over town looking for something to do.]

I don't know about you, but I thought the park was a pretty cool idea. Too bad its now just a pile of rubble.

..Ross Sagun



"After the Willow Glen Skate Park was closed for safety reasons, it seemed that there was more skateboarding in town. The city began getting more complaints about this and I have heard a number of people remark about the activity. Without a facility downtown, it is not surprising that there is more activity, especially while school is out. I have not had a bad encounter with skaters, in fact, just the opposite. I talk to the younger ones and remind them to wear a helmet and ask them about "safe places" to skate and steer them toward more acceptable places other than the street." - Mayor Patterson


"We received an email last week regarding skateboard and bicycle violations. DC Bidou discussed the enforcement procedure on bikes and skateboards along with some stats on skateboard enforcement (See below). On skateboarders, we have issued 85 skateboard cites between 7-1-07 and 7-1-08. This is a pretty high number considering the other duties and responsibilities officers tend to."" - Chief Spagnoli

Chief Spagnoli responds about Riverview Park

Sandra -
Thank you for following up on the graffiti problems at Riverview Park. I am sure that the residents living nearby will appreciate your efforts and the extra patrol.
..Ross Sagun

----- Original Message -----
From: Sandra Spagnoli

Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 9:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Safe Neighborhoods Benicia] Riverview Park - the latest target


Hello Ross,

I am following up on your email regarding Riverview Park. As you know, the Park and Rec Director Mike Alvarez, has committed to cleaning up graffiti and hazards within our parks within 24 hours of notification. Unfortunately, Riverview Park is not a City park. This park is part of a federally funded program and maintained by the Housing Authority. We have forwarded the clean up request to them and they will have 72 hours once we notify them to abate the graffiti.

Also, we have found that in Benicia, there is not necessarily a connection between skateboarding and criminal activity, specifically graffiti. Many of the juvenile curfew violators officers come in contact with during evening hours are out and about walking on foot.

Last, we will add the park to our current list of patrol checks too.

Sincerely,

Sandra

Sandra Spagnoli
Chief of Police
City of Benicia
200 East L Street
Benicia, CA 94510
(707) 746-4265
sspagnoli@ci.benicia.ca.us

*Integrity* Pride* Professionalism*Honor*Respect*

Riverview Park - the latest target

Message

Here are some comments from residents in the Riverview Terrace area. It looks like the vandals are at it again. Marking pens seem to be the culprit this time. Anyone for a stronger anti-graffiti city ordinance? Is the City listening?? A lot of this vandalism seems to be "skateboarder" related. Too bad the boarders don't have someplace convenient to go and occupy their time. This is costing us a lot more than it would have to repair the skateboard park.
..Ross Sagun


"A Mom in the Benicia Moms Club recently forwarded a link to your blog, and I have found it really interesting because I live close to your neighborhood (in Benicia Terrace). My husband and I have been very frustrated over the past few years because the park in our neighborhood (up in front of Riverhill Road) is constantly vandalized and strewn with broken glass (the most blatent offense being when each and every garbage can in the park was burned out - still not fixed). We used to take our kids up there but every single Saturday my husband would have to go up and remove graffiti and sweep up broken glass before we could visit. It feels like that park is overlooked by city staff (and I have to say that I don't blame them because it seems like the minute something is cleaned up it is destroyed again)."

Message"I haven't been there in a few weeks now (we don't go as often as we do to other city parks because of the condition). My experience is that there is always broken glass in the little concrete "roundabout" that is up by the downtown overlook."

"I went up to the park today and was reminded immediately of why I don't go there often. There was broken glass in the playground bark (yes, IN the bark) although it wasn't in its usual place, which is the cement roundabout by the downtown overlook. There were profane pictures and obscene graffiti written on the slide and the other play equipment."

"It's so frustrating. I remember that when the new Water's End park was opened about a year ago, we went on the second day and someone had defaced the brand new playstructure (within the first 48 hours of it being open). It's just totally demoralizing."

Congratulations Vallejo!

Vallejo gets grant for anti-graffiti effort
Author: Times-Herald staff report
Date: July 25, 2008
Publication: Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA)
Article ID: 9995049

Once taggers deface a surface with graffiti, Vallejo city officials and volunteers have vowed to paint it as soon as possible. In the fight against graffiti, the city will have a lot more cans of paint in its arsenal thanks to a $20,000 grant from State Farm Insurance.

State Farm officials will publicly present the funds Aug. 12 during a City Council meeting, said Vallejo Code Enforcement Manager Nimat Shakoor-Grantham.


Funds will go toward the graffiti abatement program, ...

What's in an effective anti-graffiti strategy (and do we have one)?

What exactly are the elements of an effective anti-graffiti prevention and abatement strategy? Does Benicia's strategy include these elements?


* A central number for citizens to call in to report graffiti
Yes - residents can call 745-3412 or 911 for crimes in progress

* A database to record the calls,locations, and photos of each occurrence
Yes - I am told that there is a photo book at the PD

* The database should include pictures as well as victim information, cost, suspect info
Not sure - Director of Public Works could not quantify the cost or the extent of graffiti abatement in Benicia

* Graffiti should be removed within 24 hours with attention to removal within the first few hours around schools and high traffic areas.
No. Benicia's municipal code stipulates removal within 72 hours.

* A strong message from the City council and Mayor to the Police Chief that graffiti WILL BE a priority call and investigation. This is normally an area where graffiti programs are doomed to fail.
No.

* A graffiti abatement officer or citizen-led graffiti task force
No.


* Public service messages advertising the graffiti hotline and requesting public support
No.

* A zero tolerance policy including prosecuting offenders to the maximum extent provided for by law
No.

* Working with the district attorney to ensure that he/she understands the priority our city wishes to place upon vandalism offenses
No.

* Working with local businesses to remind them of laws pertaining to sale of graffiti implements to minors
No.

* Encouraging vendors to keep graffiti implements secured
No.

* Methods to measure vendor compliance with existing regulations
No.

* Free paint, roller/brushes, and power washers to groups who want to do clean up and/or paint outs in their community.
No.

Obviously, there is room for improvement. I invite comments from all, including our city officials.

Thank you

Dear Fellow Neighbors,

Thank you to those of you that could attend the neighborhood meeting this evening. We heard a lot; some good ideas, some expected PR mitigation ("we are doing the best we can","we have everything under control"), and some unanswered questions.

I think we are making progress, as evidenced by the much improved appearance of the pathway and the tunnel. The abatement effort has been successful. However, I remain concerned about the bigger issues of prevention, not just of graffiti but vandalism in general. One only has to look at the police log (available at http://pdpresslog.ci.benicia.ca.us/Daily_Activity_Report.pdf ) to see that vandalism in Benicia is a common occurrence. Hopefully, our activism will go a long way towards lowering our incident rate, at least in our neighborhood. The word is spreading...we report suspicious activity in this neighborhood.


Will the graffiti code be strengthened? Will the PD aggressively pursue enforcement and prosecution as allowed by law? Will the school resource officer incorporate an anti-vandalism theme? Time will tell...time always tells all. You all deserve a pat on the back for standing up and being heard. Without the noise, without the clamor, absolutely nothing would have changed.


Thank you for standing up, and thank you for your support.

..Ross Sagun