HUNTINGTON BEACH : Residents Denounce Increase in Graffiti

Residents have told the City Council they are fed up with the increase in graffiti.

Several speakers at the Monday night council meeting said graffiti is growing at an alarming rate, and charged that the city’s approval of graffiti painting on some seawalls has triggered the increase of illegal graffiti in other parts of the city.

“A major problem is the city’s permit process” for legal seawall painting, said Tom Dushane, a member of Community Forum-Huntington Beach. “However well-intentioned that program may have been, we think it’s time for the council to reconsider the program.”

Another Community Forum-Huntington Beach member, Bryan Bridges, said that even police are leery of the seawall art program because it gives juveniles involved in it the right to carry spray cans, even though state law generally forbids those under 18 to possess aerosol paints.

“In Huntington Beach, we’re giving (juveniles) a permit to break the state law,” he said. Bridges said police had told him that it is also harder to prosecute graffiti crimes in Huntington Beach because of the seawall art program.

Wendy Mello, who was among speakers denouncing the rise in graffiti, told the council: “It’s time we ended the controversial (art) permit system.”

Council members took no immediate action, saying City Administrator Michael T. Uberuaga will soon report to them on the scope of the problem and possible solutions.

In an interview Wednesday, Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg agreed that the art program “is creating a problem” for police and should be ended.

“Our police officers are finding kids with bags full of aerosol (paint) cans. They just don’t stop at the seawall,” he said. “They go all over the city, and yet we can’t arrest them for possession of the cans because they have a city permit.”

Police believe that many seawall artists illegally spray graffiti elsewhere in the city, he said.

At the same council session, Councilman David Sullivan told the audience that his business has been hit by “taggers” four times.

“A lot of businesses in the community are in the same situation,” he said, adding that at the council’s March 15 meeting he will propose creation of a panel to work on the graffiti problem.