Fund-Raiser Fuels Project to Place Offenders on Graffiti Cleanup Job

Juvenile Court Commissioner Jack Gold said he watched with mounting annoyance as gang graffiti increased in the San Fernando Valley, but the sight of swastikas was the last straw.

“There’s nothing like a swastika to get you going,” he said. “People should not have to be subjected to that.”

Unlike most people, Gold was in a position to do something about it.

Gold, who sits in judgment on juvenile offenders, created a program under which gang members are sentenced to clean up graffiti.

Gold was among about 100 people who turned out Saturday afternoon for a reception to raise money for Project Heavy, a countywide, nonprofit group formed to combat juvenile delinquency. Concern over the mounting graffiti problem in the Valley prompted Project Heavy and a North Hollywood real estate agency, Colonial Realty, to sponsor the fund-raising event and invite civic, business and political leaders.

The organizers said they expected to raise about $750.

Gold, of Studio City, said he was accustomed to seeing graffiti blight the Hollywood neighborhood where he grew up, but he was moved to action “when I started to notice graffiti in . . . middle-class areas.”

“When I got to Juvenile Court in Sylmar and I started to notice graffiti on houses and businesses, I started getting madder and madder,” Gold said.

The graffiti followed the growth of white gangs, “particularly FFF and others,” Gold said. Danny Medina, coordinator of Project Heavy’s anti-graffiti program, said the increase in graffiti from white gangs, such as the Canoga Park Assassins, has almost doubled the group’s workload in the past year.

Should residents “have to live in that neighborhood, and have these kids walking around spray-painting ‘Canoga Park Assassins’?” Gold asked angrily.

Gold wanted a program under which he could sentence gang members convicted of petty crimes to clean up graffiti, which he said he hoped would “start them thinking and benefit the community at the same time.”

But first, he needed official support. So, Gold said, he met with probation officers, court officials, City Council members from the Valley and members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s gang detail.

“Gold told us he was willing to sentence” gang members to community work, “but he needed somewhere to send them,” said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Councilman Joel Wachs.

Project Heavy offered to help coordinate the Valley program, Gold said. Convicted gang members would be sentenced to 100 to 250 hours of community work, which would specifically involve removing graffiti.

Project Heavy and Gold enlisted the support of the council members, who were able to obtain a $40,000 grant from the council for a six-month trial program, which ran from July through December of 1984. This year, $90,000 was allocated for the program.

Medina said that, since the program began, Gold and other Juvenile Court commissioners have sentenced about 175 gang members to the cleanup crew, which now employs about 40 youths. The service is free to owners of graffiti-marred property, Medina said.

Gold said only one gang member drew the maximum 250 hours of work because “his name was all over North Hollywood.”