Graffiti a recurring problem downtown on landmarks such as the Waco Suspension Bridge


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Friday, June 22, 2007

By Erin Quinn

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Waco has a novel way of warning children not to someday contribute to the city’s recurring graffiti problem.


A city employee rides past grafitti that was marked late Monday along the Waco Suspension Bridge. City parks employees had the grafitti cleaned up by noon Thursday. (Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald)
A few times a year, officials from Keep Waco Beautiful visit elementary schools and have the little ones draw a picture of what means the most to them: their houses, a park on a sunny day or perhaps their grandmothers.

Then Keep Waco Beautiful volunteers come into the classroom and scribble all over their pretty drawings.

That’s graffiti, the upset children are told. And, yes, they say, it hurts.

The latest victim? The Waco Suspension Bridge.

The Waco landmark was decorated with colorfully spray-painted apparent jibberish earlier this week, as were several downtown businesses and vehicles. Police say similarities in the graffiti show it was created by the same culprit. And the bridge was hit worse last year, officials say.

But as ugly, inconvenient and costly as graffiti is, officials say Waco doesn’t really have it that bad.

Waco has not been hit as hard as other cities because when the graffiti is cleaned up it often stays gone, said Waco police spokesman Steve Anderson.

“There’s parts of Dallas where the second you start painting over it, it’s already being defaced again,” Anderson said.

When school is out, there tends to be more graffiti, Anderson said. And it is a cyclical crime driven by the fight to claim a certain area as one’s own.

Gang members or taggers mark up property to mark their territory.

Then, rival gangsters or taggers spray over the defacement — claiming it as their territory.

Ultimately park officials, business owners or other victims have to reclaim what is theirs by washing or painting over the markings.

When T-Shirts Plus on University-Parks Drive was hit with graffiti late Monday, Ken Mathis, one of the store’s owners, said he immediately began whitewashing his damaged building.

The store’s delivery truck, which was covered entirely in graffiti, will be a little more difficult, he said.

Anderson said taking care of graffiti as soon as it happens is necessary.

“It’s the ‘broken-window syndrome’: If it’s not taken care of, before you know it, all the windows in the house are going to be broken,” he said. “If you don’t take care of it, you’re sending a message to young people that we will tolerate them taking over our city.”

Anderson said such vandals are typically from 12 to 20 years old.

Most are never caught, he said. Unless an officer happens to catch them in the act, he said, graffiti criminals are difficult to trace. Most graffiti is done in the early morning hours, he said.

Cleaning graffiti typically takes pressure washing from a private company, certain chemicals, or sometimes even straight baking soda, Anderson said.

Burck Tollett, Waco city parks superintendent, said his crews see some sort of graffiti every week. They rarely report it to the police, he said, because “a lot of it is just somebody saying they love somebody.”

Luckily, he said, covering up graffiti is usually quick and relatively inexpensive.

Thursday’s clean-up of the Suspension Bridge, for example, cost about $30, Tollett estimated.

Sherri Street, executive director of Keep Waco Beautiful, said a large-scale downtown cleanup will be held Aug. 17. About 1,500 Baylor University volunteers will use donated paint from Sherwin-Williams for a graffiti abatement project.

equinn@wacotrib.com

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