Graffiti Spray showdown
Graffiti producers and coverers wage feverish battle on city's streets

Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun
Florin Blaj paints over several hundred yards of graffiti on a wall adjacent to a wall in north Indio Friday morning.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH UNIT
The Indio Police Department and the Community Outreach Unit is dedicated to the investigation of graffiti-related crimes and the suppression of criminal activity.

HOW TO HELP

If you witness a graffiti crime in progress, call 911.
If you see graffiti and want it removed, call the graffiti hotline at 391-4143.

If your home or business has been vandalized with graffiti and you have questions, call the Indio Police Department at 391-4051. Ask to speak to a COU officer.

THINK YOUR CHILD IS INVOLVED?

Signs to look for:
Graffiti-style writing in their rooms or on notebooks.
Graffiti in your neighborhood appears in your child’s room.
Interest in graffiti Web sites.
Possession of “Magnum 44” permanent marker, a favored marker by taggers, and other tools such as drill bits, spray paint tips, acrylic paint lap tags and glass etching acid.
DID YOU KNOW

Since July, the Community Outreach Unit has identified 17 different graffiti/tagging crews in the city. Each crew has two to 10 members with nicknames for each member.
There’s five types of graffiti: communicative, hate, gang, tagging and art.
Gang and tagger graffiti is the most common and most confused for each other. Gang graffiti identifies an area where gang members hang out or live.
Tagger graffiti is to gain fame or notoriety amongst other tagging crews.
85 percent of the highly visible graffiti is not gang-related.
Source: Indio Police Department and the Community Outreach Unit.

Your Voice
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Xochitl Peña
The Desert Sun
January 1, 2007

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Both groups are skilled in what they do.
Both take pride in every pass of the spray can or wave of the paint machine.

When finished, both groups marvel at their work.

The difference: one spray paints walls and sidewalks by day for all to see.

The other works under cover of darkness and is long gone before anyone sees the results.

It's an ongoing battle that pits city of Indio Graffiti Truck operators against graffiti taggers. "It's a competition - between them and us. That's the way I see it," said Florin Blaj, one of the graffiti truck operators.

And according to the Indio Police Department, it's a competition the city is winning.

The city's new Graffiti Truck has made a big difference, ridding the valley's largest city of unsightly gang and tagger graffiti that pops up on walls, sidewalk, storefronts and bridges.

In most cases, the 17-foot, custom-made vehicle is out the very next morning after property has been defaced.


"The quicker we knock it down, the better," said Gary Lewis, the city's Public Services general services manager, who oversees the truck and its employees.
Residents are encouraged to report graffiti immediately and merely have to look at the truck to figure out how.

The city's graffiti hotline number, 391-4143, is printed in bold red numbers across all sides of the truck for all to see and use.

The truck, though, is only one method used to combat graffiti in the city.

The Community Outreach Unit was created in July to combat vandalism related crimes.

In its first 4½ months, the unit made 65 graffiti-related arrests.

In addition, the city combats vandalism by working with school officials.

And, cameras have been placed strategically across the city in order to catch taggers and other kinds of vandals.

"This is a huge effort. I do think the tide's been turned," said City Manager Glenn Southard.

Other valley cities fight graffiti in a similar fashion.

Palm Springs has its own graffiti hotline.

And, city crews are quickly dispatched to clean up any reported tagging.

Indio however, is believed to be the only valley city to have a state-of-the-art graffiti truck with its own paint-making and matching system on board, said Sgt. London Pickering, of the Indio Police Department.

Among its many features, the truck is equipped with:

A hand-held portable spectrophotometer with a laser to read the composition of painted surfaces.

A laptop computer that generates and prints a label displaying the proper formula of tint/base combination to match the paint.

A paint-mixing station with an in-line manual 12-color paint-tinting dispenser that can combine colors to match more than 3,000 shades.

"We have everything (on board). We don't have to be running back and forth for materials," said Tony Muñoz, a graffiti truck operator, who works with Blaj.

On a recent outing, the two had already hit four spots across the city by 10 a.m.

One job at Indian Terrace Park on concrete walls took 15 gallons of paint called Baked Potato, to remove various tagger markings.

On a few occasions, Blaj and Muñoz said the taggers watched as they removed their work.

"They don't like us at all," Blaj said.

Both take pride in cleaning up the city and get frustrated when a wall they recently cleaned is hit again with graffiti.

But, it's their job.

"We like it," said Blaj. "We make a good match."