Our capital gets global crime tag
Liam Houlihan, transport reporter

October 23, 2006 12:00am

VANDALS are openly "tagging" Melbourne trains with graffiti, filming their illegal exploits with mobile phones and posting them on global video-sharing websites.

Members of the Sydenham Boyz gang have put their crime spree -- which involves tagging trains, spray-painting walls and burnouts -- on the YouTube website, watched by millions.
Footage shows someone using a marker pen to scrawl on a Melbourne train, believed to be on the Sydenham line.

In another Sydenham Boyz video, young men casually spray-paint graffiti on a brick wall.

Other footage, titled Sydenham Slutz, shows two females in a fist fight in a school playground.

As some of the Boyz' faces are clearly visible and they appear to use their real first names, the vandals may have given themselves away in the most public way possible.

Victoria Police says it always investigates after receiving information indicating that a person has committed a crime.

A spokeswoman said prosecutions had flowed in the past after self-incriminating evidence was found.

The young delinquents acting with impunity illustrate the lack of security on trains in Melbourne's west, according to local politicians.

"The videos that show several teenagers vandalising and defacing Sydenham-line trains and stations expose the decaying state of public transport in Melbourne's west," said the Liberals' Footscray candidate, Cam Nation.

"The Sydenham line is renowned for being the most overcrowded train service. Now you can add that it has the worst facilities, worst security, and that passengers no longer feel safe boarding trains."

Government spokesman Martin Curtis said tougher anti-graffiti laws now being introduced would hit taggers and vandals hard.

He said offenders who were caught could be slugged with a maximum penalty of more than $2500 or two years' jail.

"We're bringing in the toughest graffiti laws Victoria's ever had," he said.

"That's an indication of how seriously we take people vandalising the public transport system,"

Commuters in Melbourne's west have long cried poor about public transport in their region.

In February they revealed the dilapidated and violent state of Footscray Station, which is the second busiest metropolitan station.