Man Sentenced for Courthouse Graffiti

A 21-year-old gang member from San Fernando has been sentenced to two years probation for scribbling gang graffiti inside the San Fernando Courthouse, authorities said.

Ramon Hernandez confessed to the crime Wednesday in San Fernando Municipal Court, where he had gone to turn himself in after learning that a warrant for his arrest had been issued, San Fernando Police Detective Dan Mena said. Commissioner Gerald T. Richardson also ordered Hernandez to perform 150 hours of community service, Mena said.

Hernandez told an investigator from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office that he was let into the locked building in early February by a friend who worked for American Oriental Maintenance, the courthouse cleaning company. The company has since been replaced by another maintenance firm, said San Fernando Superior Court Presiding Judge John H. Major.

The graffiti, about the size of a hand, were found scribbled in black marking pen on walls, in a women’s restroom and on a blackboard where the status of trials is listed. Additional markings were left on several pieces of paper inside the private office of a supervising attorney who assigns trials to deputies.

Court officials initially were worried that the culprit could have tampered with files of gang-related murder cases, but they determined that that had not occurred.