Surveillance Teams Use Curfew Law to Curtail Taggers : Graffiti: Deputies have apprehended 240 juveniles since the program began six months ago. A city official says tagging has declined noticeably. : NORWALK

They are called taggers, and they leave their distinctive graffiti on buildings, freeway overpasses, walls and traffic signs.

They favor initials such as WNA, which stands for “We’re No Angels,” and KCC--”Kids Committing Crimes.”

They are between 13 and 18 years of age and get a thrill out of leaving their marks.

“Tagging crews are loosely organized individuals and their main purpose is to get recognition from fellow taggers,” said Sgt. Ozzie Ramos of the Norwalk Office of Public Safety.

But they also have been getting recognition of another sort from this city, which is mounting an organized effort to tag taggers before the taggers leave their marks on public and private property.

For six months, a mobile law enforcement unit has periodically set up surveillance in areas with high incidence of graffiti and enforced a city curfew ordinance to round up youths found loitering on the streets.

While not every youngster taken off the streets is a tagger, city Public Safety Director Kevin Gano said there has been a substantial reduction in graffiti while areas are under surveillance.

“We find kids with wide markers (felt-tip pens used for graffiti), or they may have KCC tattooed on their arms, or wear hats with one of the slogans they use,” he said.

Since the anti-tagging campaign began, Gano said, 240 juveniles have been apprehended by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies operating the mobile unit, which is a 32-foot trailer that functions as a police station on wheels.

The sheriff provides law enforcement services for Norwalk. The graffiti project is included within the $6.3-million public safety budget.

In all, eight surveillance operations have been conducted at locations ranging from the Norwalk Square shopping center to neighborhoods along Alondra Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue. Surveillance is generally conducted over a two-night period between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. Several blocks are included.

Volunteer city reserve public safety officers, equipped with portable radios and driving their own cars, monitor the targeted areas and report teen loiterers or suspicious activity to deputies and city officers heading the surveillance.

One volunteer, 37-year-old Dave Lauderdale, said he got involved because he lives near Norwalk Square and hates what he sees. “I’ve lived here most of my life and I want my community to be better. It (graffiti) has really gotten bad. It’s all over the place.”

Gano said the campaign is important to Norwalk because graffiti is unsightly and costly to the city, which spends $230,000 a year removing it from public and private property.

“It presents a real blight in any community,” he said. “People don’t really understand it and become very, very upset, feeling that their neighborhoods are being infiltrated by gang members and bad guys.”

In reality, he said, taggers are often neighborhood youngsters whose parents don’t know what they are up to.

The key to the city’s effort is a 30-year-old curfew ordinance that prohibits minors without adult companions from being on the street after 10 p.m. without a specific reason.

“We see a group of kids hanging out on a street corner or shopping center,” Gano said. “We determine they are under 18 years of age and it’s after 10 p.m. Without a curfew law, we would have to leave them there and go on our way.”

Underage youngsters are taken to the mobile unit, where deputies interview them and call their parents to pick them up.

Gano said parents are advised that if their children are picked up again, they will have to pay the cost of detention, which consists of taking youngsters into custody, processing them at a mobile unit and turning them over to parents. So far, 14 parents have been billed $214 each.

“In 90% of these cases, these are parents who have no control over the minors and we find there are problems in the home,” he said, adding that the city tries to find help for these families, including parenting classes or alcohol abuse counseling.

Gano said that one purpose of the enforcement program is to “let parents know you have to take some responsibility and action for your kids if they’re out here at 10, 11 or 12 at night.”

In addition to billing parents, the city has required 30 teen-agers to do 60 hours each of community service work, either because they were repeat offenders or were caught in the act of tagging. They have spent weekends painting out graffiti or mowing lawns and pulling weeds for elderly residents.

About 130 youngsters thought to be “at risk” for tagging or gang activity are enrolled in various city programs, including athletics at the new Arts and Sports Complex. Some also receive counseling through the city’s anti-gang program. “The idea is to keep kids away from drugs and gangs at an early age,” Gano said.

Norwalk’s campaign against tagging is a long-term effort, and Gano admits that results so far are mixed.

“We’ll have a weekend when we’re not out there and we get hit real hard,” he said. “When we have the team out, it’s reduced to nothing.”

In the long run, he said, he wants to establish a pattern of enforcement that will lead taggers to say, “Let’s go somewhere else. If we do it in Norwalk, we’ll get caught.”