Self-Declared Graffiti Buster Runs Afoul of City Officials : Civic action: Instead of gratitude, off-duty mailman gets criticism for his tactics. Last month, a lighted flare was thrown at his home.

Mailman Art Parra was just trying to help out.

Walking his daily mail route in Norwalk, he could not help but notice graffiti blanketing the walls of his neighborhood. It was ugly, Parra thought, and it created a gangland atmosphere that he did not want his children to live in.

So after work, Parra got some paint, brushes and a few volunteers and set about cleaning it up.

For this civic effort, he expected gratitude. Instead, city officials have asked Parra to cease his graffiti busting--claiming that he uses the wrong paint, angers business owners and endangers the lives of his volunteers.

The thought of Parra’s graffiti busters on the streets elicits an audible sigh from Kevin Gano, Norwalk director of public safety.

“I know he is trying to do the right thing, but sometimes he does more damage than good,” Gano said.

Both Gano and Parra agree that tagging crews--groups of youngsters painting their monikers or initials on everything in sight--must be stopped in Norwalk. Both want a city clean of urban scrawl.

“I just want to help the city,” Parra said. “(Gano and I) are fighting the same battle. We just use different tactics.”

Gano, as a city official, favors studying the problem, seeking funding, creating a program and carrying it out methodically.

“(Parra) should organize, form a board, learn to work with people,” Gano said emphatically.

Parra sees no need to study the problem or seek consensus. Every day he sees graffiti defacing the city he loves, so he picks up a brush and covers it up.

In the beginning, the city appreciated Parra’s work. Last October, Parra and a group of volunteers cut a wide swath down Rosecrans Avenue, from Studebaker Road almost to Norwalk Boulevard, laying fresh paint over old graffiti. Gano offered to reimburse Parra for the cost of the paint.

But problems developed, Gano said. Parra did not always get the permission of business owners before he painted their buildings. In some cases he used a different color of paint, or an oil-base paint instead of water-base, or covered over business signs that had been defaced. Shop owners complained, Gano said.

The city spent nine man-hours, 20 gallons of paint and $367 cleaning up after Parra, according to a city memo. That is when the trouble started.

“Kevin might be correct about that first time,” Parra said. “Initially, when we went out as a group, we had a bunch of different colors and people were just grabbing them. Now, I have all the same colors the city has.”

City officials apparently were not the only ones angry about Parra’s work. A lighted flare was thrown at Parra’s home recently--an incident Parra believes is connected to his graffiti removal efforts.

“I’ve been told that I stepped on somebody’s toes, but I don’t know who,” Parra said. But, “I’m not going to stop, not now.”

In fact, Parra, 35, intends to go out again, as often as possible, with his cans of adobe beige, beige gray and driftwood color paint to cover the scrawls on neighborhood walls.

Shortly after Parra’s first paint-out, Gano began two city programs to eliminate graffiti. Neighbors Engaged Against Tagging (NEAT) offers paint to residents to cover graffiti and encourages them to adopt a local wall.

Another program puts public safety employees and volunteers on neighborhood stakeouts to catch taggers. Those caught tagging must complete 60 hours of community service cleaning off graffiti with the NEAT program, Gano said.

These two programs, Gano said, have resulted in a 60% reduction in graffiti--measured by the reduction in calls to City Hall about graffiti and the number of man-hours spent cleaning up graffiti at residents’ request.

The city set aside $250,000 this year for graffiti removal.

But Parra still sees inadequacies in the city programs. The area of town known as The One-Ways--a series of one-way streets in south Norwalk with lower-income housing and a lot of gang activity--is largely ignored, Parra says. Residents in the area bordered by Pioneer, Alondra and Norwalk boulevards and Hopland Street do not call the city to ask for help, Parra says, so he goes to the area and offers them paint.

Gano says that Parra endangers the lives of his volunteers by painting over memorials to fallen gangbangers--a dangerous proposition.

“I tell (volunteers) there is danger down there but, then again, there’s danger everywhere,” Parra said. “Down in The One-Ways, people see that . . . we’re just concerned citizens, setting an example that regular people care about removing graffiti.”

But Gano disagrees with Parra’s tactics. At a December meeting of the city Neighborhood Watch captains, the two argued. Gano called Parra “incorrigible” and said Parra’s approach was “fragmented.”

The incident angered Parra’s supporters, who complained to City Manager Richard R. Powers.

“He gets as much or more done than the city, and he just gets grief for it,” said Leroy Bacca, who lives on Parra’s mail route and has loaned his truck to Parra’s cleanup crews.

Among the complaints were that Parra had been promised reimbursement for paint costs, but the city had not paid him.

Gano said Parra had turned in receipts to the city, and the request for reimbursement was traveling through city channels. Although there was some confusion over how much the city owed Parra, a check for $469 will eventually find its way to him, Powers said.

“I called the city once, and they told me the check was in the mail,” Parra said. “But I’m a mailman, so I should know if it was.”

This is the only time the city will pay Parra for paint, Powers said. From now on, they want him to participate in the city program.

Parra’s supporters see their mailman as a maverick, a man willing to put himself on the line to help the city, no matter what city officials say. They point to the Feb. 9 attack on Parra’s house as proof of his willingness to help, even when he may be in danger.

On that Tuesday night, when Parra and his wife were readying their children for bed, a lighted flare hit their daughter’s window and set a small fire on the window sill and lawn.

Arson investigators told Parra there was not enough evidence to pursue an investigation, but he took the incident as a sign to be more cautious. He refused to allow his photograph to be printed with this story.

His caution, however, does not extend to his war against graffiti. And he has no plans to join the city program, saying he would rather just pay for the paint himself.

“Ultimately, I just want to see the graffiti taken off,” Parra said. “NEAT is a good program, but everyone needs to be involved, doing whatever they can.”