ANAHEIM : Anti-Graffiti Crew Makes Own Mark

When teen-agers Carlos Alvarez, Wendy Caballero and Marcie Ramirez get together to paint on walls, they do it blatantly and in broad daylight, even though the police sometimes get called.

But they and their friends aren’t putting up graffiti; they are painting over them.

Ten youths, ages 14 to 21, are employed this summer by the Anaheim Beautiful Graffiti Free program, funded by a $15,000 federal grant. The youths, who come from low-income families, earn the minimum wage of $4.25 an hour and will work up to 40 hours a week until Labor Day.

On Thursday, the youths were at Sycamore Junior High School planting vines that will eventually cover some walls that are a favorite target of graffiti taggers.

“We need to make the city look better so it will look better than L.A.,” said Caballero, a 15-year-old Anaheim High School student. “L.A.’s all dirty, and we don’t want that here.”

Alvarez, 15, said the city needs to look its best if it is going to continue to attract visitors. A San Diego resident, he is living with an aunt in Anaheim for the summer.

“When people come to Disneyland, they don’t want to see graffiti,” he said.

People often honk their car horns and wave when they see the youths painting over graffiti, Ramirez said. But sometimes people mistake the group for taggers and notify the police.

“The police stop all the time and tell us they got a call about us,” she said.

Graffiti are a major problem in Anaheim, said Carolyn Griebe, who runs the city’s anti-graffiti programs. Using donated paint and supplies, the youths are dispatched to 20 to 60 graffiti sites daily.

“Graffiti affects not only the tourists we are attracting here, but it also affects the way people who have lived here a long time feel about their neighborhoods,” Griebe said.

“If someone’s neighborhood has never had graffiti and all of a sudden it starts popping up, they are going to feel negatively about the city,” she said. “We need to assure them we are doing something.”

According to city officials, there are two types of people who put up graffiti--taggers and gang members.

Albert Brady, a city employee who supervises the anti-graffiti crew, said that taggers seem to be the most prolific group. Taggers put up graffiti, usually a nickname they have adopted, simply for the sake of doing it, he said.

“The taggers seem to be battling with each other to see who can put up the most graffiti,” Brady said. “A lot of times, it’s a group of kids who have adopted the same tag, and they try to put it up everywhere.”

Alvarez said the taggers taunt the cleanup crew when they see their graffiti being painted out.

“They just tell us they are going to come back that night and do it again,” he said.

Often the taggers keep their word.

Alvarez said he has repainted the same wall up to five days in a row.

Gang members, meanwhile, paint graffiti to mark their territory, Brady said.

He said they get angry when it is removed. On several occasions, Brady said, gang members have threatened him and his crew.

“What we have started doing is taking down gang graffiti in the early morning, before the gang members get up,” he said. “If you wait until the afternoon, they are wide awake.”