Oxnard graffiti a pox on community

Ventura county,CA,USA

By Paul D. White
August 30, 2004

Oxnard has an unfortunate new distinction: the worst graffiti vandalism along Highway 101 between Los Angeles and San Francisco. And the problem is getting worse.

I base this claim on what I've seen during approximately 1,500 round trips to Los Angeles County and close to a dozen trips to San Francisco during the last six years. Drive between Oxnard's borders with Camarillo and Ventura, including the northbound and southbound portions of the Santa Clara River overpass project, and you'll see the proof.

Several graffiti-covered houses "welcome" you to Oxnard's border. They've been this way for years, with no apparent attempt to clean them up.

Working your way through Oxnard, northbound on Highway 101, a growing number of businesses on both sides of the freeway regularly display fresh vandalism.

The worst-vandalized area, by far, is the Santa Clara River overpass project. Everything -- and I mean everything that has a paint-accepting surface -- has been ruined with graffiti: piles of new materials, highway exit signs, brand-new concrete underpasses, overpasses and, most recently, the newly installed fancy lampposts.

Even the workers on this project are forced to drive heavy equipment that is regularly covered with graffiti.

In considering this problem, the only question to be asked is, "Why?"

-- Why does Oxnard allow this graffiti not only to go up, but to stay up for such a long time (and thus encourage more vandalism)?

-- Why is it that despite spending almost $400,000 last year removing graffiti (more than four times the amount spent by the next closest Ventura County community), Oxnard still can't stop the problem?

-- Why does a similar highway improvement project in neighboring Camarillo, also funded by Caltrans, have none of the graffiti problems that plague Oxnard's Santa Clara River project?

Graffiti ruins a city in many ways, besides the obvious feeling that your community has been slimed. It creates an atmosphere that encourages apathy and more criminal behavior. It wastes much-needed funding and human resources on preventable cleanup and repair. It promotes gang activity and stokes intergang rivalries that lead to homicides and other violence.

The most maddening thing about Oxnard's (or any community's) graffiti problem is that it can be so easily prevented by working with children in schools to promote respect for the law and support of their community (kind of like the idea Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez had for a charter school, which was ignored by the city government).

Graffiti can be prevented by punishing vandals to the fullest extent of the law (kind of like Lopez's gang injunction idea that is threatened by noisy opposition from a few, and inadequately supported by the quietness of the majority).

Graffiti can be prevented when local government, businesses, churches, schools, parents and neighborhoods stand up in support of their Police Department to enforce zero tolerance against this criminal behavior.

Unless Oxnard residents do this, it is likely Los Angeles will soon be rallying its citizens by imploring them not to let Los Angeles become another Oxnard.

-- Paul D. White, of Ventura, teaches high-risk youth at West Valley Leadership Academy in Canoga Park for the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Teaching many convicted vandals, his school has been graffiti-free since its inception.