Graffiti Smudge Mission Viejo

When the planned community of Mission Viejo was laid out a quarter of a century ago, it was envisioned as a place of picturesque homes and parks, meticulously groomed greenbelts and visually pleasing shops and stores.

The vision did not include graffiti. But in recent weeks, the reality has.

Several weeks ago, spray-painted graffiti began appearing on sound walls, bridges and electrical transmission boxes in the city’s usually pristine neighborhoods, and residents are concerned about what that means for the community and its property values.

Law-enforcement officials say they believe that only a few people, possibly pranksters, are responsible, but they have not ruled out the possibility of street gangs trying to infiltrate south Orange County from Los Angeles and Santa Ana. Police and local school officials have identified symbols generally associated with the Los Angeles-based Crips gang and white-supremacist “Skinhead” gangs among the scrawlings.

Whatever the source, city officials have vowed to clean it up.

In an attempt to stop the problem before it gains momentum, the Mission Viejo Planning Commission met Monday night to discuss an anti-graffiti ordinance that would establish penalties and offer rewards for people who identify offenders. Final action is scheduled for next month’s commission meeting.

In the meantime, Commission Vice Chairman Craig Galbraith has recommended that the city assign someone full time to find graffiti for immediate removal. He likened the graffiti to a cancerous growth on the community that must be attacked before it can spread.

In a Jan. 3 letter to his fellow commissioners, Galbraith said the graffiti phenomenon has “an important economic and visual impact” upon the city, in addition to the social problems of gang activity it represents.

“It has been estimated that gang-style graffiti can reduce property values and business activity in the affected area by as much as 10%,” Galbraith said in the letter. “Thus, for Mission Viejo, the negative economic impact could conservatively run into hundreds of millions of dollars.”

That aspect of the issue is of such local concern that it was one of the chief topics of discussion at a recent meeting of the Saddleback Valley Board of Realtors, said Steve Weekes, a realtor who lives in Aegean Hills, bordering Mission Viejo.

“It could hurt property values because there are people leaving other places to get away from that sort of thing,” said Weekes, who is convinced the graffiti are, in fact, the work of out-of-town gangs.

“Initially, I thought it was just some teen kids,” Weekes said. “But the pattern of it worried me. They looked like the symbols of the gangs in Los Angeles and Santa Ana.”

Appeared Elsewhere

Mission Viejo is not the only south county community confronting a graffiti problem. Special police units have been formed in the past year in San Clemente and Laguna Beach to monitor gang activity as graffiti have become more common in those cities.

Police say Skinhead gangs have left graffiti all over Laguna Beach during the past year, and several assaults have been blamed on them. Three men identified as having been responsible for an attack on a homosexual man were sentenced last week to prison terms.

Police Sgt. Don Barney said the Skinhead graffiti typically contain racist remarks, anti-Semitic references and Nazi swastikas.

In San Clemente, police say that their graffiti problem has sprung up within the past 6 months and appears to be the work of aspiring Latino gang members. Detective Leonard Goodwin said he is confident the graffiti are the work of local “wanna be” gang members, who are emulating real gangs in larger cities.

“You may have a younger brother of one (a gang member) who goes around with a spray can,” Goodwin said, adding that graffiti have popped up in San Clemente from time to time over the years. “These kids are trying to form into gangs, but they can’t get them together yet.”

Began During Holidays

In Mission Viejo, the graffiti problem was almost non-existent until the Christmas holidays, when local officials said someone spray-painted a Skinhead symbol behind a Nativity scene at one of the entrances to the city.

The developer of the community, the Mission Viejo Co., cleaned up graffiti on one recent occasion, company spokeswoman Wendy Wetzel said.

But, she added, “we consider it a small incident.”

City officials did not consider the problem trivial, however, when graffiti appeared all over town after New Year’s Day. Galbraith said he personally counted “50 to 100” graffiti slogans around Mission Viejo High School, mostly along the brick sound walls of Muirlands Boulevard and La Paz Road.

Peter A. Hartman, superintendent of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, said he received reports of graffiti near Trabuco Hills High School and Mission Viejo High School, though not on school grounds.

Hartman said he considers the graffiti the work of pranksters but added that he has received no indication that any of his district’s students were responsible. Hartman has asked his district’s secondary-school principals to discuss the problem at a meeting soon.

Trying to Stay Alert

“We’re just trying to stay alert to it,” said Hartman, who added that this is the first time he has even heard of graffiti in Mission Viejo. “We don’t want to put our heads in the sand and assume it never will be a problem.”

Galbraith said city crews got out within hours and cleaned off most of the graffiti. He said homeowners associations also did their part.

“But there’s still a lot left,” Galbraith said, referring to a quarter-mile stretch of Muirlands Boulevard just outside the city limits in Aegean Hills.

Along the sound walls there, the word fear appears in bright green paint in several places. Graffiti slogans also appear on the sound walls at several street corners, as well as on a transmission box at Los Alisos and Muirlands boulevards. Beneath a bridge near that intersection, more black spray paint has appeared in recent days.

Under that bridge, at least, the graffiti most likely are the work of students. Jose Carrillo, a gardener who works in a small park nearby, said he has seen students from a local intermediate school go down to the bridge and spray-paint graffiti on recent afternoons.

“They spray paint, and then they run,” he said.

‘It could hurt property values because there are people leaving other places to get away from that sort of thing.’