YORBA LINDA : Campaign Against Graffiti Planned

City officials and Brea police are proposing several new programs to curtail a rise in graffiti in shopping centers, industrial parks and housing tracts during the past year.

Under one plan, which will be presented to the City Council on Feb. 18, police will photograph and catalogue graffiti, then a gang crime investigator will check the markings against a countywide system used to track gang problems.

City officials also plan to form a community Crimestoppers group, which will raise funds to combat the graffiti problem. In addition, the city will step up efforts to remove graffiti on public property with city maintenance crews.

While Yorba Linda has one of the lowest crime rates in Orange County, business owners and residents have complained in the past few months about the rise in graffiti, which are appearing on walls in shopping centers and industrial parks as well as fences and barriers in housing tracts.

Brea police officers--who serve Yorba Linda--say graffiti reports rose 48% from 1990 to 1991. Still, with the number of incidents going from 52 to 77, the problem is relatively minor when compared to other cities in the county.

“It’s enough that it concerns us,” Lt. William Lentini said. “But I wouldn’t call it an epidemic. . . . The percentage looks astronomical, the numbers do not.”

Lentini said about two-thirds of the incidents can be traced to gangs from such nearby cities as Placentia and Anaheim.

Police have also traced some of the graffiti to so-called skateboarding gangs, whose members hang out at shopping centers where they play on benches and glide along sidewalks, Lentini said.

“A good portion of this has been from skateboard gangs,” he said. “They’re not trafficking in drugs. . . . What they are doing is defacing property. They are less threatening but no less damaging to the property.”

Lentini said the increase in the number of shopping centers in Yorba Linda has brought a parallel rise in complaints about skateboarders.

“They have those long smooth sidewalks and the benches to jump off of,” he said. “It’s their own mini-skateboard park.”

Councilman Gene Wisner, who owns a shoe store in a shopping center at Yorba Linda Boulevard and Valley View Drive, said police recently curtailed skateboarding near his business.

Graffiti painting fell once the youths left, Wisner said, but they simply moved to other shopping centers.