Graffiti blights suburbia



By Maria Papadopoulos, Enterprise staff writer

Paul Studenski is not a fan of graffiti.

The Brockton city councilor recently drove past an abandoned gas station at Plain and Main streets and was dismayed to read the latest graffiti in the city.

The words “Beantown bitches” were scribbled in red spray paint on the building's white walls, he said.

“I think it really detracts from people's quality of life,” Studenski, the former Brockton police chief, said. “People in the morning don't want to read that stuff.”

Studenski is not alone.

Area business owners, public officials and residents are trying to deal with a resurgence in graffiti that has been sprayed on public and private property across the region, including in Avon, Brockton, Abington, Stoughton, Taunton, Holbrook and East Bridgewater.

“It's getting worse,” said Brockton Department of Public Works Commissioner Michael Thoreson.

In recent weeks, graffiti was sprayed on the George N. Covett Courthouse on Main Street and the probation office on West Elm Street.

Abington volunteers have worked hard to remove graffiti in their town that began appearing in June, first at Frolio Junior High School on Washington Street.

Fifteen school windows were damaged and defaced with different graffiti symbols and gang-related signs, police said.

A swastika was spray-painted on the Early Childhood Center, a town school next to Frolio Junior High and the Eager Beaver Playground.

Several Abington businesses have also been recently tagged with graffiti.

“It's like an epidemic,” said Clayton Stone, a member of the Abington Citizens Police Academy Alumni, a volunteer police and community support group formed in 1999 that helped clean up graffiti in town recently.

Experts say the upswing in graffiti, if it's gang related, can be a sign of increased gang activity and potential violence in the community.

“It raises all kinds of red flags,” said Susan Guarino-Ghezzi, chairman of the sociology and criminology department at Stonehill College.

“The police need to be very vigilant about it, because if it's suggesting to them that graffiti is being used to send messages to intimidate, then the next step might be that they follow through on their threat,” she said.

In these cases, graffiti causes a sense of disorder and neighborhood vulnerability while it empowers the perpetrators, she said.

“Their hope is that people will read it and respond to it and it will give them an edge in their community, in terms of being able to wield control,” she said.

Others said graffiti yields community turmoil.

“The biggest concern is we have gunshots every night in this city, and the graffiti incites youth violence,” said Denise O'Malley, a Brockton educator who began an anti-graffiti campaign in the city five years ago.

In other cases, graffiti could be a simple explanation of those seeking attention and something that is not really systemic, Guarino-Ghezzi said.

“Malicious destruction to property is one of the ways kids can express anger,” she said.

A 17-year-old girl confessed to vandalizing the playground at East Taunton Elementary School with two other teenagers last month, police said.

Local business owners are also fed up with the graffiti.

David Elman, a Brockton developer, arrived at his condo conversion project at Clinton and Perkins streets last month to find about 4 feet of graffiti spray painted in black on the property.

He spent about $100 to remove it immediately, he said.

“It was embarrassing,” Elman said. “We've seen it in several places in the city. It's irritating, absolutely irritating. But how do you deal with it?”