Foes of Graffiti Uncover Few Signs of Success

The latest news from the front in Los Angeles’ war against graffiti has arrived, and it isn’t pretty.

Despite nearly $2.8 million spent by the city this year for graffiti eradication, a whopping $10 million by the Southern California Rapid Transit District and unknown sums from private sources, public agencies and private volunteers admit they remain overrun by scrawling vandals.

“A lot of us feel we’re at rope’s end,” said Harry Von Littlefield, a teacher who heads a graffiti spray-out campaign in South-Central Los Angeles. “I’ve been involved in this thing for seven years, and I’m still waiting to hear of something that really works.”

Von Littlefield was one of about 150 representatives of groups battling graffiti who attended a “Graffiti Summit” on Saturday at City Hall.

An official of Operation Clean Sweep, the city program that coordinates much of Los Angeles’ graffiti eradication effort, said the session was intended to bring participants in the graffiti war together to compare notes.

“It’s as much motivational as anything,” said Delphia Jones, Operation Clean Sweep’s director.

But what the experts said might give pause to even the most intrepid anti-graffiti warrior.

Rebecca Barrantes, a spokeswoman for the RTD, said that despite the $10 million spent by the agency, “we’re not eliminating the problem, but merely trying to keep up with it.”

In the last year, graffiti artists have become so pervasive that the agency will soon begin using plainclothes transit police to patrol buses for graffiti “taggers.” RTD has dubbed the program Operation Trojan Horse.

“It’s gotten to the point where people call us and complain that they don’t want our buses driving through their neighborhoods because of graffiti being on them,” Barrantes said, adding, “as if we’re the villains.”

On a more positive note, she said that transit police, who for months have compiled “hot sheets” on suspected taggers, have arrested 132 people for marking up buses this year. And RTD officials are near to reaching a “pact” with about 200 known graffiti artists to leave the buses alone, she said.

While officials from several agencies touted their graffiti prevention and removal efforts, and vendors plied anti-graffiti wares ranging from hi-tech soaps and paints to garden variety vines to dissuade graffiti artists, some participants assailed government agencies for not doing enough.

“We spend $300,000 a year to remove graffiti from freeways in Los Angeles and Ventura counties alone,” said Caltrans official Larry Loudon, answering critics who claim the agency is going too slow. “In an era of limited resources, we have to be more concerned with repairing guard rails.”

Carmelo Alvarez, who heads a graffiti cleanup effort for the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, urged volunteers not to surrender, adding that the graffiti war “is filled with many incremental victories.”

“Even as we’re sitting here talking about strategies to deal with the problem, graffiti artists are gathered discussing their own strategies for where they’re going to strike, and what they’re going to put up,” he said.

The remark elicited a smile from 23-year-old Raul Gamboa of Glendale, a self-described graffiti artist who said he crashed the gathering, intended only for invited guests, “just to see what the other side is thinking.”

He added: “These people are living in a fantasy world if they think they’ll ever get rid of graffiti.”