Camarillo Passes Stiff Anti-Graffiti Ordinance : Crime: Two council members protest sanctions against juveniles carrying spray paint or markers during certain hours.

The Camarillo City Council has narrowly approved a tough anti-graffiti law, despite some council members’ concerns that the ordinance violates residents’ constitutional rights.

After a spirited, 1 1/2-hour debate, the council voted 3 to 2 late Wednesday to enact a new law that forbids young people from carrying spray paint or wide-tipped markers in public at night.

Mayor Charlotte Craven said the law will go a long way toward reducing the city’s growing graffiti problem.

“It makes young people responsible for their actions,” Craven said. “It also makes parents responsible for their children. It also makes shopkeepers responsible.”

In addition to making it illegal for minors to possess spray paint and markers after dark, the law allows authorities to fine parents whose children are caught spraying graffiti.

The ordinance also requires owners of hardware stores, hobby shops and other retail centers to keep spray paint and other items used in making graffiti behind the counter or elsewhere beyond the public’s reach.

Although other cities such as Ventura have passed similar anti-graffiti ordinances without major debate, two Camarillo council members said the new law goes too far.

Ken Gose not only voted against the ordinance, the former high-school civics teacher gave his council colleagues a short lecture on constitutional rights.

To illustrate his point, Gose recounted a folksy tale from his native Tennessee, where residents of a small town wanted a one-way street because a nearby city had one.

The townspeople were so happy after turning a main thoroughfare into a one-way street that they went off for a picnic, he continued. “The only problem was they couldn’t get back home,” he said.

The moral, Gose said: “Be careful of doing something because Los Angeles or some other city does it.”

In fact, the Camarillo ordinance is stricter than Los Angeles’ anti-graffiti ordinance. The latter does not make it a crime to possess spray paint, markers with tips wider than a quarter-inch or other tools used by graffiti vandals.

Gose and Councilman David M. Smith, who also voted against the law, said they object to forcing shopkeepers to spend money on new shelves or storage cases to protect their stock of spray paint and markers.

The two councilmen also oppose forbidding minors from possessing paint, markers or glass-etching tools that could be used in graffiti. The law carries penalties of up to $1,000 in fines and six months in jail for juveniles caught with such items in public between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Citing the U.S. Constitution, Gose, a former teacher at Channel Islands High School, told his fellow council members that government should restrict individual rights only to protect public health, safety, morals or welfare.

There’s not enough evidence, Gose said, that graffiti threatens the public to warrant limiting people’s rights to carry paint and markers.

And Smith, a financial consultant, said he is concerned that the law would allow police to assume that young people are carrying paint to spray graffiti. “It calls for an interpretation of intent,” Smith said.

But Councilman Michael Morgan said city officials can trust officers to arrest minors only when there is evidence that the youths are using the paint for graffiti.

“Most policemen have a brain,” he said.

Morgan joined Craven and Councilman Stanley J. Daily in voting for the ordinance.

Supporters of the law said Camarillo had to take tough action to halt the spread of graffiti and the related costs of removing the defacement. Graffiti removal cost the city $62,792 in 1992, compared to $46,054 in 1991, officials said.

Given the spirited opposition, the council agreed to review the ordinance in one year to see if it is working.