Bellville, Illinois - A new proposed ordinance requires property owners to be responsible for removing graffiti on their property within 14 days of notice by county officials with a fine of $75 to $750 a day for each day the graffiti remains.
More at KMOV.com St. Louis
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Colorado Springs, Colorado - A rash of vulgar graffiti tagging in Colorado Springs has gottent worse as the weather has gotten warmer.
"The way we count graffiti is every tag would be $54.11," explained Mark Davis with the Graffiti Removal Team, pointing towards graffiti on a wall. "So if we were to cover that up, sandblast it off is how we would do it, $54.11 and we probably did 50 of them today." More at KOAA.com Chicag, Illinois - Five additional graffiti abatement officers were hired by the City of Chicago's Graffiti Blasters to combat graffiti. An additional 7,400 tags have been removed since the hiring of the new crew. Graffiti Blaster was started in 1993 by Mayor Daley to address the graffiti problem.
More at ABC7 News Chicago Sacramento, California - A good samaritan lost his life after falling while attempting to clean graffiti off a highway sign. Friends of the deceased knew him to be passionate about graffiti removal.
More at Digtriad.org Buffalo, New York - A prolific tagger has been sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service and thousands of dollars for hundreds of graffiti tags.
“You had the audacity to deface and paint and dirty up our city,” Judge DiTullio told him. “Now, you will clean up your mess and your graffiti under the watchful eye of city officials, the Probation Department and this court. I would guess, Mr. Whitefield, that leaning up your mess will be a lot harder than creating it. It’s a lot harder to take off paint than slap it on.” More at The Buffalo News Toledo, Ohio - The owner of a 50 year old flag business, located in an historic fire station, wants justice. She wants the teenager arrested for tagging her building and six others buildings in the commercial corridor, to pay retribution by scrubbing the spray painted graffiti off the 86 year old historicbrick facade.
Wendy Beallas, the owner of Flags Sales and Repairs, said if convicted, “I want him to be responsible and accountable for himself and clean it up,” she said. “This was very destructive. I want him to clean it, not just my building, but all the buildings.” “I am very disappointed,” she said, “It is just unbelievable and senseless to me.” More detail at the Toledo Blade SAN JOSE, California – In 2011, a city-run graffiti removal program was outsourced to a private contractor. The move has been mostly praised by city leaders and community members.
As graffiti has been more quickly and effectively removed from the neighborhoods, the graffiti taggers have shifted their targets to freeways and rail bridges where reaction time from Caltrans and Union Pacific is slower. The result is that graffiti tags remain for extended period of time in high visibility locations. Total number of graffiti tags remains constant at 3,600 but the incidents within the neighborhoods has decreased. City officials credit quick response times, triaging graffiti incidents, and matching over paint to background color. City officials say that total square footage of graffiti is down by approximately 25% since the previous year. City officials reported that 87 percent of reported graffiti is cleaned up within 24 hours and 96 percent within 48 hours. A smartphone application allows residents to report graffiti and then is emailed a response once the tag has been removed, showing the before and after photos. High satisfaction rates are reported from residents who have used the system. Link to Mercury News for more details. Kristian Holmes, age 32, was found guilty by a London jury on 38 counts of criminal damage. Total damage caused by his graffiti between 2003 and 2010 was estimated at £250,000. He frequently targeted trains and train stations.
More detail at Bexley Times. With the hope of reducing the amount of graffiti tagging, the City of West Dallas has designated a “free wall” for graffiti artists. Located on an abandoned warehouse, this sanctioned graffiti wall is the first of seven walls planned to be designated throughout the city over the next few years.
Assistant Chief Randall Blankenbaker said, “We hope you will not only display your talents here, but make your influence on younger artists to do this in a way that is legal.” The City currently receives approximately 60 graffiti reports per month. Only time will tell if this Graffiti Free Wall experiment will increase or decrease the total amount of tagging. More detail at Dallas Morning News. Summary by Clean City Innovations Graffiti Watch
MEDFORD, Massachusetts - Anti-Semitic symbols and other hateful symbols, including Swastikas and references white supremacist groups, were spray painted on more than two dozen locations including schools, playgrounds, buildings, street signs and the athletic fields at Tufts University. “It’s unconscionable,” said Mayor Michael J. McGlynn, “I think it’s too much of a coincidence that it would happen on a day when so many remembrance services were going on.” The graffiti attack occurred on the night before Holocaust Remembrance Day, the annual commemoration of the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews. “Today, we again say with one voice that these hateful messages will not be tolerated in our community,” McGlynn said. Rabbi Braham David of Temple Shalom in Medford said, “We have tolerance for everyone, but we do not have tolerance for anti-Semitism, for bigotry, for homophobia, and for hatred in general.” Anyone with information is asked to contact Medford police at 781-395-1212 or 781-391-6404. More from the Boston Globe. |
AuthorFrom Clean City Innovation Graffiti Watch Archives
August 2015
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