What’s in a Name? $50 Bounty : Lynwood Offers a Reward for Simply Telling Who Graffiti Vandals Are

Lynwood is offering a $50 bounty to anyone who provides the Sheriff’s Department with the names of graffiti vandals.

While many cities offer rewards for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of such vandals, Lynwood officials said their program offers a reward for simply naming them.

The city is offering $300 more for information that results in an arrest and conviction. A reward fund of $10,000 was established.

To earn the bounty, a person must call City Hall with the name and correct address of a vandal. If the information is verified by sheriff’s deputies, the citizen will be given the $50, officials said.

Earlier this month, letters were sent to the city’s 14,000 residents asking for help in identifying vandals. Officials promised that the information would be kept confidential.

So far, about 15 citizens have called. Just 10 callers left their names. The city has not yet paid the $50 bounty to anyone.

Officials said they started the reward-for-names program because they were disgusted with graffiti. “We’re fed up with them destroying our city. We are ending up with everything looking like hell,” Mayor Robert Henning said.

For about a year the vandals have been hitting all areas of the city, he said. “They hit around schools, major streets and buildings,” he said. “They want other kids to see their work. They hope the other kids will join them. They think its a big joke.”

Councilman Louis J. Heine said the city spends more than $200,000 a year on graffiti cleanup.

“We have got to do something to stop spending this money on graffiti,” he said. “We could be using it to make necessary repairs to the streets and sidewalks.”

Vandals keep six employees of the graffiti work crew busy five days a week, Ralph Davis said. Davis supervises the graffiti removal crew.

In February, 1989, the crew had 426 cleanup jobs, compared with 529 in February this year, Davis said.

Spraying graffiti is a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.