TEMPLE-BEAUDRY : Program Wages War on Graffiti

Nothing in this neighborhood seems to escape the ugly and ominous spray-painted scrawls of gang members and taggers.

It’s on the red awning above Lupita’s Bar, a fire hydrant, retaining walls. Not even the streets are safe: five-foot letters have been scrawled on the asphalt.

Now comes David Bermudez, whose new job is to get rid of every last piece of graffiti. As part of a six-month pilot program called “Zero Tolerance,” Bermudez and his assistant, Martin Gonzalez, hit the streets recently in a new $60,000 truck outfitted with high-tech graffiti-fighting equipment. Both men were hired by the Central City Action Committee, a nonprofit youth organization that was awarded a $125,000 contract to administer the program in the area.

The key component in their task is a spectrophotometer, which allows Bermudez to roll up to any graffiti-scarred wall and within minutes have ready a batch of paint that nearly matches the wall’s original color. The hand-held instrument’s computer and scanner record the surface’s paint color, then spit out a formula for the mix of tints necessary to remake it.

On a counter inside the truck, a tinting machine and paint mixer make up the proper color from gallon-size paint cans on the floor. Bermudez uses a laptop computer to record the site’s address, the date it was painted and to print a label for the paint can with its matching color.

Technically, it’s all Bermudez and Gonzalez need to fulfill the program’s goal of ridding the area of a patchwork of beige and gray paint splashes that have been used to cover graffiti. The theory is that once the area is clean and the men have less work, they should be able remove reported graffiti within 24 hours, hopefully deterring vandals from striking again.

The Central City Action Committee was chosen, in part, for the project because for five years it has administered a part-time city graffiti-removal program. Under that program, teen-agers, juvenile court referrals and adult staff painted over graffiti in the area.

The concept of a mobile self-contained graffiti-removal program was created by the truck’s manufacturer, Idaho-based Pro Paint. The system has been used successfully in San Francisco, said Delphia Jones, director of the city’s Public Works Department’s Operation Clean Sweep program.

“It made it a lot easier and more practical for them to remove the graffiti and they were able to eliminate the patchwork-quilt look,” she said.

Los Angeles Police Officer Webster Wong, who runs the Rampart Division’s volunteer community cleanup unit, said such a graffiti program is badly needed in the area. On some streets in the neighborhood, Wong said, residents are hesitant to remove gang graffiti out of fear of retaliation.

But Wong also said that graffiti would not go away until other community-oriented approaches were taken, such as more alternative recreation for youths, events such as community paint-outs and meetings with residents to discuss the problem.

“You need to address everything in dealing with graffiti: enforcement, eradication, empowerment of the people,” said Wong. “There needs to be an exchange between all groups. There needs to be something for the kids.”

Already, Bermudez is counting his small victories. On his first Saturday on the job, he and Gonzalez painted over gang graffiti on a liquor store wall. When he returned Sunday, gang members had tagged over the fresh paint. The men repainted the wall.

Bermudez returned again the following day. The wall’s brick surface was still a smooth, uninterrupted brown.

“Hey, it’s still clean folks, I guess I won that one,” said Bermudez, as he glanced at his work. “Three cheers.”