Giving Taggers the BNE-fit of the Doubt

Where: San Francisco, CA, United States
Mon Sep 18, 2006 at 09:25:03 AM EST
Tags: Art, Cities, Police (all tags)




Public Enemy Number One in San Francisco is not BALCO labs or George W. Bush (we're as surprised as you are). No, it's a graffiti artist, who is tagging BNE stickers all across the city. Mayor Gavin Newsom has posted a $2,500 award for his capture; we can only assuming that he's hiding in a cave somewhere in the hills of Berkeley, if CIA intelligence is to be believed.

Actually, we were most entertained by the quotes from the man tasked with catching the BNE tagger, who is (we're not making this up) named Officer Putz. According to the Times, Officer Putz is consumed with his duties:
Officer Putz, who has been on the graffiti beat since 2001, takes his work seriously; he will not allow his face to be photographed and he gives his age merely as "in my 30's," for fear of tipping his hand. "It's a chess game," he said.
Sure, San Francisco has a big homeless problem, and there's that whole earthquake thing. But stickers? Now that's a chess game.