Countywide : Proposed Law Would Tag Taggers, Parents

Alarmed at the proliferation of graffiti in Orange County, state Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange) has introduced legislation that would strip convicted minors of their driver’s licenses and make parents accountable for teen-age taggers.

Lewis’ bill comes as cities throughout Orange County grapple with a dramatic increase in spray-painted graffiti that experts say is more the product of a nationwide teen-age fad than an explosion of gang activity.

“It has completely taken off just in the past year,” Lewis said Tuesday. “What it says is that there is no place left in Orange County that is safe from graffiti.”

Meanwhile, the County Board of Supervisors took its own steps Tuesday, forming a multiagency task force to tackle the graffiti problem and hearing proposals from Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi to toughen existing sentencing requirements for violators.

Under the legislation introduced by Lewis, a minor convicted of graffiti vandalism would be ineligible for a driver’s license until age 18 or lose a current license. In addition, teen-age violators would have to do community service cleaning up graffiti--20 hours for a first offense and 40 hours for a second.

But the key provision of the Lewis legislation--and the portion he expects to spark the greatest controversy--is a requirement that at least one parent of a convicted graffiti vandal be required to participate in the cleanup or pay a fine of $1,000.

“It would make parents take a more active part in bringing their kids up in the right manner,” Lewis said. “If a youngster is convicted of tagging and the parent has to perform community service or pay a fine, I imagine they’d take much more interest in what their kids are doing at night.”

Lt. Ron Helton of the Santa Ana Police Department said the legislation could prove helpful in the fight against graffiti but mostly as a deterrent. Catching graffiti vandals--a stealthy bunch which operates under the cover of darkness--has proven difficult for police.

Even so, Helton said, it might take only a few “test cases” of vandals and their parents hit with the penalties of the Lewis legislation to “clearly send a message to other parents that they have to start taking heed of what their kids are up to.”

A Westminster woman who has worked hard to curb graffiti also approved of Lewis’ tack.

“I think parents should shoulder some of the responsibility,” said Vera Palomino, a Westminster mother of three who heads up Manos Unidas, a community support group. “A lot of these kids are out until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. Parents should start using a bit more restraint.”

Locally, Capizzi’s recommendations, which could be presented to local judges today, would require stints of community service and restitution payments from offenders or their parents of as much as $5,000 in some cases.

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, the task force chairman, said local graffiti artists are “creating an image of despair to visitors here and fostering fear in our residents.”

In a law enforcement training film presented to the board Tuesday, officers described the youthful “tagging” crews as having perpetuated a crude subculture of their own, in many ways separate from violent gangs by their style of dress, language and action.

“It’s unacceptable,” Vasquez said, adding that the city of Santa Ana alone spent about $1 million for graffiti removal last year. “It’s a tragedy for a city to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this.”