Cleaning up the graffiti
It is disgusting, it is unsightly and it is a problem that can and must be made to go away. New Providence is a small seven by 21-mile island with a population of approximately 212,000 people. The graffiti-aged artists make up less that 50 percent of that number and the areas where the majority of them live are tight and congested.

It should be virtually impossible for these "criminals" to operate for an overly extended period without being uncovered. But the police are having this problem with them and it has been recurrent for many years, and with different generations of "graffiti artists."

These people are vandals who cost the business community and the government millions of dollars every year to continually clean up the wanton messages that they paint on private and public buildings all across the island.

These are activities that they then brag about to each other in the further display of their vile markings that are hard on the pockets of the people who have to pay to clean them up and hard on the rest of the population and visitors who take in the eyesores but can't understand them.

Now, according to the second in command of the school policing programme Asst. Superintendent Ellsworth Moss, the students are marking up the bathroom walls in the schools with coded messages, as well as outside of the buildings and perimeter walls. From what we can see, it also appears that they have targeted walls next to some police stations such as the public library and clinic in Elizabeth Estates, and the Flamingo Gardens Clinic on Carmichael Road.

However, the police are on the right track to bring a solution to the problem – at least for such a time until these rebellious youngsters determine another way to express their claim to fame and power.

The police have on their list more than two-dozen offenders in the St. Cecilia community who they have put to work in cleaning up the vile markings in that area. It is well that the police will keep records of the "taggers' code marks but that will not go far enough in the shortest possible time to rid the whole island of these disgusting graffiti.

But it is very likely – a sure bet – that the people they have on record would easily recognise the work of other taggers and could identify them where it relates to other crimes being committed and where relevant, their affiliation with gang activity. To help the current group along, if they suddenly have amnesia and cannot identify any of the other work, then they will have to manage the clean-up wherever on New Providence has been vandalised. That may help to improve their memories.

The police or the courts should go even further with those persons convicted of marking up public and private sector buildings and sentence them to restoring those buildings. They should be made to pay a fine, which will then be used to buy the materials needed to accomplish the restoration.

As we have noted on a previous occasion, the vandals can get the attention they crave but it must come at a cost to themselves rather than the hard working people who are the victims of their ill-conceived ideas of art, fame and power.