As the Paint Goes On the Anger Comes Out

* I do not know how to contact Sgt. James Bower or Detective Phil Morritt, (“Tagger Taking Photo of Boxcar Killed By Train,” June 25) but please let them know that I take exception to their referring to graffiti as “art.”

Vandalism is not art.

Destruction of property is not art. And implying that a tagger is an artist in the Los Angeles Times will only serve to exacerbate the problem. Let’s not glorify criminals. Let’s take them to court where they belong.

KATHY MARKS

Woodland Hills

* We read a great deal about tagging. Actually, tagging is an innocuous name for vandalism. Taggers destroy and deface property that does not belong to them. The psychological motivation for this activity is described as a method for establishing self-esteem. The tragedy and the irony of one having to stoop to such negative means to establish self-esteem is that they are not really doing so.

It is not possible to establish true self-esteem through negative activities.

RON SPATZ

West Hills

* Congratulations to the LAPD and the Community Tagger Task Force for their apprehension July 8 of a tagger who had scrawled his pathetic moniker all over Los Angeles--even on his own house. But the media was in error in revealing the actual tag and showing photos of it. Unwittingly, the media gave this tagger the one thing he craved most: citywide recognition. Make taggers--and their ineffectual parents--clean up (or pay to clean up) the mess for which they are responsible, and put the kids in Juvenile Hall. But let them writhe in anonymity, the thing they fear the most.

DON WULFFSON

Northridge