Work crews scouring city for gang graffiti
By: Gregg M. Miliote, Herald News Staff Reporter 08/28/2006

FALL RIVER - A small inmate work crew and some initiative shown by the Fall River Housing Authority can go a long way.


At the behest of official with the Housing Authority, the Bristol County Sheriff's Anti-Graffiti Unit was at most of the city's housing projects wiping away dangerous gang-related graffiti last week.
The unit - comprising a sheriff's officer and a handful of inmates from the county jails - could be seen driving to Sunset Hill, the North Rocliffe Apartments, the Fordney Apartments and Bennie Costa Plaza during most of last week.
Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson's unit comes at no cost to the city, something Housing Authority Deputy Executive Director Dan McDonald called a "win-win situation."
McDonald said although his department does have the necessary equipment to remove graffiti from the various public housing developments, most of his crew of workers are busy on other end-of-the-summer projects.
Gang graffiti can be seen on the walls of businesses, homes, vacant buildings and concrete structures from the Flint to Corky Row. McDonald said the city's housing projects are not immune to the problem, and have actually become more of a target than other areas.
"We constantly fight with the graffiti problem," McDonald said. "The way we feel is that the sooner you get to it, the better it is.
"If we don't fix it quickly, then all of a sudden we have a major problem on our hands."
McDonald's assertions about cleaning up gang graffiti quickly are supported by many nationally renowned gang experts, who say the timely removal of urban scrawl is a city's best defense against the rise in gang activity.
Experts unanimously agree that graffiti is widely accepted as the "newspaper of the street." It is more than just a public nuisance, experts like Michael Knox say: "Graffiti is how a gang sends its messages."
Knox, who formed Houston's first gang unit during the late 1980s, said being proactive about removing the sometimes cryptic graffiti messages sends a message that gang activity won't be tolerated by a community, but also stymies the gangs' ability to communicate and recruit.
"Young people are extremely susceptible to repetitious advertising, and that's just what this is," Knox told The Herald News earlier this year. "The best way to rid gangs from a community is to remove the graffiti.
"Even if they do it again, just keep removing it and sooner or later the message will get through."
That's just what McDonald is attempting to do by keeping housing Authority Officials vigilant about gang graffiti.
"We've got to take care of this stuff before there's a big problem," McDonald said. "We have employees out inspecting our sites on a weekly basis."
McDonald said most of his graffiti problems are found at the Housing Authority's family sites.
"Our family sites are where the worst of the trouble is found," McDonald said. "It's a small percentage of the people living there who are actually involved in gangs. But there are also a lot of outsiders who we know are staying in some of the units. There are outside influences that are hard to control."
But regardless of which housing project the graffiti problem plagues, McDonald said it great to know that assistance in removing it is just a call away.
"We're really happy that the Sheriff's Department does this for us," McDonald said.
During a recent interview, Hodgson said his small but effective unit is available to any community eight months out of the year.
He also said requests for the Anti-Graffiti Unit do not have to be made solely by elected officials or others in positions of power within the city.
"I want people to know that community members can call us about the gang graffiti and we will get on it," Hodgson said.


E-mail Gregg M. Miliote at gmiliote@heraldnews.com.