An Escalation in the Spray-Paint Wars : The frighteningly narrowing difference between hard-core gangs and graffiti crews

Graffiti vandalism, or tagging, is a serious and expensive blight on society. Its continued presence often serves as the most public indication of a neighborhood in decline, and the costs involved in removing it are especially galling at a time when individuals, merchants and local governments are pressed by scant resources. But it can get even worse than that. It’s time to realize that some of the vandals are street terrorists in spray-paint guise. In some instances, it seems, tagging is no longer enough for them.

Consider, for example, the San Fernando Valley story of a 14-year-old Sylmar boy, a 17-year-old Lake View Terrace youth and their 17-year-old buddy from Burbank. All three have been arrested in connection with the almost inexplicable Dec. 15 shooting of Chatsworth High School student Gabriel Gettleson.

Los Angeles police now say that the 14-year-old has confessed to being the shooter, and that the incident, in which Gettleson was wounded over a common backpack, was the culmination of a wild crime spree. The three were members of a tagging crew, a label usually reserved in the public’s evolving streetwise glossary for gang-like groups that supposedly exist only to spread their “mark.” But this group is suspected of fighting other taggers that day, as well as of robbing other innocent citizens before they stole Gettleson’s book bag; some of its members remain at large. Gettleson, who was sitting outside the school when the shooting occurred, has had to undergo surgery for a bullet lodged near his spine.

Other disturbing examples include the 14-year-old San Gabriel Valley youth who last month stabbed a rival tagger four times with a knife at John C. Fremont Junior High School. A police sweep of suspected graffiti vandals in Anaheim last June resulted in the arrest of several youths on charges of handgun possession, burglary and sales of narcotics.

Police describe the self-confessed shooter in the Chatsworth case as a youngster “out of control.” His Burbank companion, suspected of driving the shooter to a second vehicle after the attack on Gettleson, is being held at Juvenile Hall. “He decided to associate himself with this tagging crew, which is no better or worse than being in a gang,” said a Juvenile Court commissioner.

For youths thinking of becoming taggers, this ought to remove a bit of luster. The tagging crew in the Chatsworth case shows that the war on graffiti vandalism and the fight against common, violent street crime are sometimes one and the same.