Job for Juvenile Offenders : Panel OKs Graffiti ‘Paint-Out’ Program

A Los Angeles City Council committee last week unanimously approved $30,000 for a new Westside program to force convicted graffiti artists and gang members to paint over the unsightly scrawlings they create.

Under the program, a judge may sentence a convicted juvenile offender to 150 hours of supervised graffiti removal, said Marlene Bronson, chief field deputy for Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

Along with painting over graffiti, the program will include educational and psychological counseling and help in finding a job.

The program will be implemented in Yaroslavsky’s 5th Council District, Ruth Galanter’s 6th District and Marvin Braude’s 11th District, Bronson said. It will stretch from Mulholland Drive on the north to Los Angeles International Airport on the south and from La Cienega on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west, officials said.

Up for Council Vote

Yaroslavsky introduced the funding request on May 17 at a meeting of the council’s Finance and Revenue Committee, which he chairs. It is expected to come before the full council for a vote in the next two weeks.

Sponsors also have asked the county and private donors to help pay for the program, which is expected to cost $170,000 for its first year.

The county Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote June 7 whether to grant $23,000 to the program, said Sue Widman, chief of the Community Services Division of the county Department of Community and Senior Citizen Services.

The program will be run by Project Heavy West, which has been providing counseling to truant youngsters on the Westside for 12 years.

The graffiti removal campaign will be modeled after a highly acclaimed program, sponsored by a Project Heavy office in Pacoima, that project officials claim has led to less graffiti in parts of the San Fernando Valley.

‘Turf Identification System’

Lorenzo Merritt, executive director of Project Heavy West, said the program was proposed last fall to address the growing graffiti problem on the Westside and to encourage gang members and spray-paint artists to look for less destructive ways of expressing themselves.

“Graffiti is a communication system,” Merritt said. “It’s a turf identification system. If you keep the graffiti down, you keep the communications and the drug use down.”

Merritt and other gang experts said one of the best ways to stop graffiti from spreading in a particular area is to immediately paint over it, in the hope that the culprit will target another location the next time he leaves his mark.

Bronson said the program will be the first of its kind on the Westside, where organized graffiti removal is limited to city donations of paint to neighborhoods fighting the problem.

Ultimately, Project Heavy West will publicize a phone number that people can call to request a team for graffiti removal in their neighborhoods, she said.

Expansion Considered

Bronson said the program will start with one team of six offenders, which will be dispatched on weekends and after school hours. She said the effort most likely will be expanded if it is successful.

Rick Ventre, executive director of Project Heavy San Fernando Valley, said offenders participating in his office’s 4-year-old graffiti removal effort have put in an average of 5,500 hours a year eliminating graffiti at 2,600 commercial and residential sites in the valley.

While neighborhoods get immediate benefits from the program, the youngsters are taught lessons in responsibility and are shown alternatives to gang membership, said Robert A. Ferber, a deputy Los Angeles city attorney who sits on the board of directors of Project Heavy West.

“We don’t just put the kid out there,” he said. “We try to counsel him, de-gang him if we can. The graffiti is really just the vehicle by which we help these kids. It also helps the community in a direct way.”

Officials said the proliferation of rock cocaine in recent years has contributed to an upsurge of gang activity and graffiti throughout the city, including the relatively affluent Westside, where officials have been taken by surprise by the scope of the problem.

“Rehabilitation is not a bad word,” said Ferber, who prosecutes gang members. “If you want to de-gang a kid, you’ve got to provide an alternative. Right now, you have more alternatives in South-Central (Los Angeles) than you have on the Westside.”