Police lieutenant explains types of tags, necessity of covering them up quickly

By Maria Gonzalez, mgonzalez@VenturaCountyStar.com
September 9, 2004

The large, spray-painted mural under the Highway 118 overpass in Simi Valley depicted a groaning teenage boy clutching his head with one hand and a bottle of booze with the other. The graphic image carried an artist's touch.

"As you can see, it's done quite well," Simi Valley Police Lt. Roy Jones said Wednesday while presenting a photo of the image to the Simi Valley Community Gang Task Force.

No matter how well it's done, however, or how artistic the image might be, it's illegal. And city officials will paint over it.

"Despite the artists' talent, it's still vandalism and a crime," Jones said, noting the scene is now gone, covered in a single, neutral color.

During his presentation to the task force, which is made up of community members and city officials, Jones showed pictures of local graffiti and offered information on tagging. Just five of the 16 gang task-force members attended the quarterly meeting, including Councilwoman Barbra Williamson and Police Chief Mark Layhew.

Jones described three types of graffiti: gang, artistic and junk. Although the artistic type is clear, gang and junk graffiti are characterized by quick scribbles, usually of a person's moniker, gang name or other signs and initials, he said. Jones' slide show included photos of defaced street signs, public walls, trash bins and chairs.

"This kind of thing is very difficult to stop," he said.

The key is quickly notifying officials, who are supposed to paint over reported graffiti within 24 hours. All the graffiti in Jones' photos have been eliminated, Jones said, stressing the need to paint over all graffiti, especially gang-related tags that can be crossed out and painted over by rivals in a graffiti war.

"The longer a piece is allowed to stay up, the more apt the opposite group is to retaliate," Jones said. "The potential for violence over this incident increases."

Jones also showed how taggers and gang members can view murals and tags from around the world through Web sites and buy tagging supplies online. Jones recommended the task force also use the Web to provide information on graffiti to the public and make it possible for the public to report vandalism online.

Simi Valley's public works department has a hotline for the public to report graffiti.

One local resident who attended the meeting, Jean Leighton, 74, said she was pleased with the city's quick response to graffiti.

"If they remove it, then they take away the thrill," said Leighton, who wore miniature handcuff earrings. "It costs money, it's ugly and they're not all the artistic (type)."

Leighton expressed some sympathy for those who exhibit talent through their pieces and said she wondered whether anything could be done to help them.

"If you could get a hold of these kids that have this talent, it could be utterly fantastic," she said. "Maybe we could save some of them."

Jones noted that the artistic variety of graffiti has decreased since last year, and the gang-related type has increased.

"I think we have a lot of younger juveniles, in the 12-to-15 age range, looking for gang acceptance," he said.