ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Graffiti: Get Smart--Don’t Grandstand

The ability of graffiti to stoke the political fires is evident again with the county’s Graffiti Task Force and its mixed bag of actions and proposals.

In a good move, the Board of Supervisors is extending to unincorporated territory, which it governs, anti-graffiti rules similar to those that more than a dozen cities in the county have imposed in recent months. The supervisors have ordered stores to keep spray paint and ink markers behind the counter. They also allowed county crews to clean up illegal “tagging” on private property.

Also commendable is the adoption by the district attorney’s office of uniform penalties for vandals breaking the law for the first time. They will be subject to 20 days of cleanup duty, $650 in fines and suspension of their driver’s licenses.

On the bad side is the task force’s attempt to get the state Legislature to lower the level at which graffiti vandalism becomes a felony from $5,000 in damage to $400. Given the cost of putting in new panes of glass to replace ones etched by taggers, and with jails overburdened already, that is far too low a threshold.

It smacks of political grandstanding, giving officeholders seeking reelection the chance to mail out political flyers proclaiming themselves oh so tough on graffiti. We saw a bit of that this week when Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez took aim at clothing ads on bus shelters.

When the amount of cocaine required for felony prosecutions was reduced, it did not solve the drug problem. Legislators should learn that lesson and think twice before fiddling with the law.

Graffiti are indeed a blight, one that is costly and hits cities across the county, from Anaheim to Newport Beach. The Graffiti Task Force is a good idea, bringing together prosecutors, judges and supervisors to map out an anti-tagging strategy. And strategies aimed at forcing convicted taggers to help clean up are especially worthwhile.

Not all taggers are gang members. Many who mark up fences and windows, freeway signs and sidewalks are trying literally to leave their mark, seeking in the wrong way a sense of identity and self-worth. Those deeper causes of vandalism are not liable to be solved any time soon, and certainly won’t be addressed by tampering with felony laws.

But it is good to see communities mobilizing across the county to battle graffiti, energizing residents and the politicians who represent them. Most of the steps taken so far have been good ones, but turning taggers into felons is not.