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REDUCE GRAFFITI TAGGING AND DEFACEMENT

by Mimi Sawyer
Graffiti Tagging

Graffiti tagging is a crime that broadcasts gang related turf wars, drug activity and hate. Not only is it ugly, graffiti vandalism and delinquency is costly. More than $15 billion per year is spent by our state and local governments to counteract graffiti tagging and property damage. Neighborhoods marked with graffiti tagging are also prone to other forms of crime and delinquency because it promotes the idea that no one cares. 

Graffiti's visual pollution jeopardizes the quality of life in our communities. Tagging reduces property values (the National Association of Realtors reports that graffiti vandalism can cause properly values to decrease by 15%), causes businesses to lose their customers as they become too fearful to shop in the area, and increases gang activity as the neighborhood decays.

Because overworked police departments don't always have the resources available to pursue all defacement complaints, community involvement plays a key role in graffiti abatement.

Combating graffiti tagging requires action in three ways: anti-graffiti education, clean-up and law enforcement. Educating elementary school children is one of the most effective ways of wiping out graffiti tagging. Tagging removed within forty-eight hours can result in nearly a zero rate of vandals repeating the defacement. The faster you remove the graffiti, the faster the tagging problem diminishes because you prevent the defacement from becoming a status symbol among the gangs and taggers. And with community support, police departments can become much more efficient and successful in pursuing graffiti-tagging defacement complaints.

Graffiti Abatement via Education

  • Encourage teachers at your child's school to incorporate the Graffiti Hurts curriculum supplement into their lessons.
  • If your city doesn't enforce a strict anti-graffiti ordinance, write a letter to the editor to your local newspaper to help get the problem of graffiti tagging and defacement into the spotlight.

Graffiti Clean-Up

  • Participate in a local, city-sponsored graffiti clean-up event in your area. Many cities, such as Phoenix, Arizona, host graffiti clean-up days and offer free anti-graffiti clean-up kits including paint and supplies.
  • If graffiti taggers have vandalized your property, you'll want to remove the graffiti immediately. Depending on the surface, one of the four basic methods of removing graffiti should work: painting over it, chemical-based cleaners, water-blasting and sandblasting.
  • "Adopt-a-Wall" programs help communities keep graffiti off a wall or an entire block. This will allow you to clean-up graffiti promptly because the necessary consent forms and supplies will already be in place. If your community doesn't have an active program, guidelines are available if you'd like to champion a graffiti clean-up initiative.

Law Enforcement

  • If you see someone tagging a wall, never confront the perpetrator. They may be armed and dangerous. Instead, call 911 to report an accurate description of the perpetrators, the graffiti defacement, and details on their vehicle including a license plate number. Your community may even offer a reward for any reported graffitti defacement that leads to an arrest.
  • Nearly every city and county offers a special graffiti reporting hotline and many offer a graffiti removal request-form on their web site. If not, report all graffiti defacement to your city's police department.

More information on graffiti abatement is available from No Graffiti, Graffiti Hurts, and Keep American Beautiful.