Bloomberg Mounts A New War On
Graffiti
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New "Quality Of Life Battle"
On the
theory that people can and will judge a book by its cover, Mayor Bloomberg is
taking a page out of the Rudy Giuliani playbook and mounting a new war on
graffiti.
“When I’m driving down the street and
I see some I always call the Commissioner of Community Affairs Jonathan
Greenspun cause he’s always bugging me about how important it is to reduce
eliminate graffiti,” says Bloomberg.
Still
driving around the city today one could see a resurgence of graffiti on
buildings, road overpasses and subway entrances. This is why the mayor is
mobilizing his anti-graffiti troops.
The
mayor’s graffiti army will include an 80-member NYPD task force.
It will travel around the city trying to find and arrest graffiti
artists.
The squad, police officials said, will
also be in charge of painting over the offending signs.
In addition, there will be graffiti coordinators in each of the
city’s 75 police precincts, 9 housing police squads and 12 transit
squads.
“I think it’s a good idea. I think it
follows this broken windows theory concept where if we don’t catch the small
stuff they grow to big monsters,” says Adolfo Carrion Jr., Bronx Borough
President.
The Bronx borough president says it
is an important issue for the mayor.
“It gives
an indication of the environment of the city when you have graffiti and when you
trash in lots of places that look like people don’t care,” says
Carrion.
“I’ve heard a number of people say
they were surprised at the scale on which this is being proposed given the fact
that not been complaint wholesale throughout communities,” says C.Virginia
Fields, Manhattan Borough President