By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 2, 2003; Page B01

The volume of graffiti painted by members of street gangs and self-styled artists has increased significantly this year in Washington, and police and business owners said they fear that the blight will encourage street crime.

The proliferation of scribbling can be charted at the city's traditional problem spots -- such as the warehouses along Metro's Red Line tracks in Northeast -- and in new concentrations on street signs and storefronts. In the U Street area alone, cleanup costs have run into tens of thousands of dollars this year, one official estimated.

But police and city officials, struggling with meager resources to tackle the issue, said they worry about even greater costs. They said that graffiti can heighten the appearance of disorder in a city already dealing with increases in homicides, car thefts and other crimes.

"It indicates to criminals that . . . people just don't care," said Mary C. Williams, the District government's Clean City coordinator. She added that her office has been besieged with requests for help controlling graffiti.

The city has trucks that can blast away graffiti with high-pressure water and a heat-sensing camera device that deterred graffiti at one trouble spot by broadcasting this warning to people who approach: "Please move away from the wall. Your picture is being taken." But officials said they have been unable to keep up with the surge.

D.C. police investigator Kristian Kimble, who has spent years tracking the problem, estimated that the amount of graffiti scrawled by gangs and others is up by about 65 percent in the city this year.

In Northwest Washington's 4th Police District, which stretches from Columbia Heights north to Takoma, Cmdr. Hilton Burton said he has seen the amount of graffiti increase tenfold.

In the suburbs, too, authorities said that graffiti is a persistent problem. But the city appears to be a favorite target.

Graffiti tied to a new breed of street gang has increased exponentially, D.C. police and others say. Predominantly Latino gangs are using graffiti to mark competing claims to a wide swath of Northwest Washington.

Mimicking gangs in Los Angeles and other graffiti-marred cities, members of these groups cross out or deface each other's tags. The District's police and public works departments frequently race to remove this kind of graffiti before the spray-paint battles turn into deadly street violence, as they have in other cities.

Markings not tied to turf wars also have increased in the District, police and community leaders say. The non-gang "tags" often are so elaborately designed, with sweeping strokes, that they are illegible.

Roger Gastman, 25, a Bethesda resident who in 2001 compiled a book, "Free Agents," about the D.C. graffiti scene, said the writers he knows are "mostly just . . . white kids from the suburbs." They want to paint an area that is busy, and safe enough to hang around after midnight -- but they tend to stay away from Georgetown and Friendship Heights, places where they fear they'd be caught more easily.

One tagger, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used, said graffiti is part of city life. The man, who said he is 22 and uses the handle "KOMA," added, "There's graffiti in every city." Asked about the damage he's caused, the man replied, "I don't really think about it."

When they have the time, some graffiti writers create elaborate "pieces" 10 feet high. The multicolored, mega-designs were prevalent this summer on the backs of old warehouses along the railroad tracks behind V Street NE.

Not all graffiti is done with paint. On U Street several weeks ago, someone used a device to etch scrawls on eight to 10 windows.

DCfootwear.com, a tiny shoe store on U Street with just one window to the street, was among those damaged. "It obscures everything," complained co-owner Rick Seabron. "And you know, your window is the selling point. It's the lure."

Seabron said that contractors told him that removing the graffiti would thin the windowpane and cost as much as replacing it. The cheapest quote from any contractor was about $950, which he said was money he needed to spend on inventory.

About three miles north of Seabron's shop, Robin Smith expressed concern this summer about graffiti on walls around her Colorado Kitchen, an upscale restaurant on Colorado Avenue NW.

"I look at it from the financial end of it," said Smith, who is owner and manager. "Do I want to go eat on Connecticut Avenue, where it's all pretty and nice? Or do I want to go eat someplace where it looks like thugs hang?"

D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4) called last week for an anti-graffiti initiative that would combine a 24-hour hotline for reporting new graffiti with a promise from the city to remove it within 48 hours.

That would be a challenge. The city received nearly 500 requests for help removing graffiti in the past year, officials said. The Department of Public Works takes about a month to respond to requests for removal. Williams, the Clean City coordinator, said she hopes volunteers can help.

Copying a program from Los Angeles, Williams said the city bought the $3,000 heat-sensing camera and in July put it atop Marie H. Reed Community Learning Center in Adams Morgan, a longtime graffiti canvas. Graffiti at the school has been reduced, Williams said.

She said the city might expand the program by buying a mix of real cameras and dummy camera boxes, which cost $500 and give a verbal warning but take no photos.

"I don't know if we'll catch up. I don't know if we can even curb it," Williams said. But she said she remained hopeful that progress would be made.

Police have been unable to focus heavily on the problem. The situation was different in 2001, when Kimble and Amtrak Police Officer Scott A. Davis formed their own anti-graffiti unit and spent months gathering intelligence about taggers.

They staked out known graffiti spots with camouflage suits and night-vision goggles and went undercover to parties and bars popular among graffiti writers.

Then came the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the police department no longer was able to devote as much time to the work.

Police in Los Angeles and New York have made graffiti enforcement a priority. But in Washington, there are too many other competing demands to devote anyone to graffiti deterrence full time, D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said.

"I don't have the luxury of something like that right now," he said.