The Riled Bunch : Oxnard: From poor neighborhoods to upscale areas, a few volunteers provide the muscle for a private assault against graffiti.

The graffiti war began in a littered alley where young street toughs hung out to do their dirty work.

Raymond Price stood by for years as a spray-painted collection of gang slogans and rude words spread across the cinder-block alley walls and wooden fences behind his south Oxnard home.

And when the 60-year-old Korean War veteran couldn’t take it any more--when city crews couldn’t keep pace with the urban scrawl and not enough neighbors seemed to care--he took matters into his own hands.

He became a graffiti vigilante, a one-man scouring squad dedicated to erasing inner-city-style blight.

“I’m one of those guys who always sticks his nose in and his neck out,” Price said.

Armed with a city-supplied roller and bucket of paint, Price has patrolled the alley for about a year to erase graffiti just as soon as it is painted. He confronts vandals, chasing them off despite warnings from his wife and his doctor that he shouldn’t.

“I wouldn’t be in too good of shape if I got into some kind of confrontation,” Price said. “But I think if you stay on top of these kids, they give up and go other places.”

From Oxnard’s poor La Colonia district to the upscale neighborhoods near the River Ridge Golf Course, a handful of volunteers provides the muscle for this private, little-publicized assault against graffiti.

The idea is to remove graffiti within 48 hours to discourage taggers from participating in a war of words on walls throughout the city.

The effort includes junior high school students and senior citizens.

It involves ordinary Oxnard residents who at some point became fed up with the stain and spread of graffiti in their neighborhoods.

And in Oxnard’s Rio Lindo neighborhood, anti-graffiti efforts have evolved into a full-fledged crime-prevention patrol.

“I think what has worked for us is that word has spread throughout the entire city that if you come over here and mess with us, we are going to be right on top of you,” said Jay Holsinger, a 15-year Rio Lindo resident and a founder of the neighborhood patrol.

No neighborhood in Oxnard is more vigilant than Rio Lindo when it comes to wiping out graffiti.

About 50 residents of this working-class housing tract participate in the nighttime patrols that started in August, 1990, Holsinger said.

In the last three months, the patrol has caught three groups of vandals spray-painting neighborhood walls and held the taggers until police arrived.

Patrol members recently followed the arrest of a 21-year-old El Rio tagger through the Municipal Court system and were so alarmed at how the case was handled that they, along with city officials, have requested a meeting with Presiding Judge Bruce Clark to discuss future prosecutions.

Last month, Felipe Garcia pleaded guilty to misdemeanor vandalism, according to court documents. Judge Roland Purnell sentenced Garcia to three years probation and a $350 fine, and ordered him to clean up the damage.

“The city of Oxnard feels that this light sentence will not serve to deter or discourage graffiti taggers,” wrote Mayor Manuel Lopez in the letter to Judge Clark. “It is extremely important that these vandals be prosecuted and sentenced firmly but justly to discourage, deter and educate younger potential taggers who might follow the same path.”

The Rio Lindo patrol caught Garcia in October tagging a neighborhood wall during an early morning graffiti spree that caused an estimated $10,000 damage.

“I didn’t expect them to take him away in chains to the dungeon, but I had some expectation that the judge would be a little more chiding about that type of activity,” said Holsinger, who monitored the court proceedings. “I just don’t want to see the erosion and decay of our neighborhood, and I feel graffiti is a foot in the door.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin D. Farrell, who prosecuted Garcia, said he believes that justice was served.

Although Garcia could have been sentenced to six months in jail for one act of such vandalism, Farrell said he was a first-time offender and it is unrealistic to expect the maximum penalty.

“If you wanted to cut off the hand of people who do graffiti, that would probably eradicate the problem, but we don’t live in that kind of society,” the prosecutor said. “I don’t blame people for feeling that way, and I guarantee you that if this had been a second offense the stakes would have gone way up.”

Nevertheless, city officials are concerned that the justice system doesn’t fully appreciate the extent of Oxnard’s graffiti problem.

The city spends more than $500,000 a year to wipe out graffiti, said Manny Vega, who heads Oxnard’s anti-graffiti program. Combined with private removal efforts, Vega estimates that more than $1 million is spent in Oxnard each year to combat the problem.

The City Council recently launched an aggressive anti-graffiti program, and raised the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of vandals from $250 to $1,000. An anti-graffiti task force is considering tougher city laws, including a maintenance ordinance that would allow the city contractor to remove longstanding graffiti from private property and bill the property owner for the work.

But Vega said the backbone of removal efforts is the force of neighborhood residents who have become fed up with the spread of graffiti.

“A lot of people are starting to feel that if we don’t put a stop to this, or at least try to get after these taggers, we’re going to end up looking like Los Angeles,” Vega said.

Near Haydock Intermediate School in south-central Oxnard, a group of junior high school students last week painted over graffiti scribbled by their peers.

Toting a five-gallon bucket of paint supplied by the city, the youngsters erased graffiti in an alley near the school and at nearby Durley Park. The students are members of the school’s Kiwanis-sponsored Builders Club.

“It’s annoying to go outside and go to the park and have graffiti everywhere,” said 13-year-old Kelly Inloes, an eighth-grader at the school. “We just got tired of looking at it.”

Students touched up an alley wall, already painted once with peace symbols, and a water tower at the neighborhood park. Anissa Velasquez, 13, said she has tried to persuade some of the graffiti artists at her school to stop.

“We tell them not to do it,” Anissa said. “They are just making Oxnard an ugly place.”

Added Kelly: “And if they think we are uncool for painting over it, that’s their problem.”

A few blocks away from the junior high, Raymond Price was keeping pace with the graffiti markings as they reappeared on his alley wall.

He has never been able to decipher the messages, and has grown tired of trying. All he knows is that they are ugly and need to be immediately erased.

“Before we came down here, all you could see was this crap on the wall,” Price said, rolling a tan-colored paint over what appeared to be either two large A’s or a couple of tombstones.

“There are enough people who could do this if they wanted to become concerned,” he said. “You can’t stick your head in the sand and hope that it goes away. This graffiti problem is not going to go away.”