Cuffed after graffiti party
6 tagged outside lines

BY ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF


Marc Ecko

The graffiti crowd won in court, but the NYPD got the last laugh.
After a judge okayed designer Marc Ecko's graffiti-themed block party in Chelsea, cops nabbed six suspects who allegedly spilled out of the event last Wednesday and marked up nearby streets.

Event organizers said the six weren't affiliated with them, and implied the city was being vindictive after losing a bitter legal battle.

"There is no connection between the artists who performed at the event and ordinary, run-of-the-mill graffiti arrests," said lawyer Daniel Perez, who represented Ecko and won him the right to hold the street festival.

"For the city to imply a connection is more of the same smear campaign, and to some extent sour grapes," Perez said.

The six male suspects, who ranged in age from 17 to 37, were hit with the misdemeanor charge of making graffiti.

Cops allegedly caught them slapping prepainted stickers bearing graffiti-style scribble on public telephones and mailboxes.

Mayor Bloomberg and City Councilman Peter Vallone tried to stop the block party, arguing that spray-painting a mock subway car, even as an artistic statement, sanctioned vandalism.

"By the same token, presumably, a street performance of 'Hamlet' would be tantamount to encouraging revenge murder," a federal judge wrote in ruling that Ecko and his graffiti artists had a First Amendment right to hold the event.

Ecko, 32, who with Atari is putting out a graffiti-themed video game, supplied steel panels created to look like vintage New York subway cars and invited artists to spray away.

The NYPD's citywide vandalism task force worked the area around W. 22nd St. after the festival.

A stepped-up police presence in the area also netted another seven men, six on charges of possession of marijuana and one for criminal possession of a simulated pistol.