Santa Ana Schools No Longer Such Easy Marks for Taggers

The 16-year-old tagger had destroyed five copies of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” with bold scribblings of his nickname, Sink, and his tag crew name, OWS--”Only the Wicked Survive.”

In past years, the Valley High School junior might have been let off easy for defacing school textbooks.

But for the past nine months, the Santa Ana Unified School District has teamed up with Santa Ana police to crack down on taggers and other vandals. Now, anyone caught vandalizing school property is promptly arrested, ordered to pay restitution and either sent through the juvenile court system or to the Santa Ana Police Department’s community service diversion program for first-time offenders.

The result has been a decrease in graffiti at the district’s 45 schools and an increase in the number of cases leading to arrests. During the current school year, police have made arrests in 48 graffiti cases, up from the 27 cases that led to arrests the previous school year.

As a result of the year-old collaboration between the Police Department and the school district, schools are also receiving more compensation from taggers and their parents, school officials said.

“Graffiti and tagging used to be really out of control,” said Nadine Rodriguez, principal at Roosevelt Elementary School, one of the schools in the district most targeted by taggers. “But now, with the police helping, we can catch the vandals quickly. The system is so effective.”

After arresting the Valley High student, Officers Mona Ruiz and David Marshall of the Police Department’s graffiti task force ordered the youth to complete a community service program and pay for the damaged books.

“It’s almost like an addiction,” the 16-year-old told the officers. “I try to stop, but it’s hard.”

Ruiz then warned the boy that if he continues his “habit,” he could go to jail. “You’ve got to learn to respect other people’s property,” she said.

Fewer vandals were caught in previous years, when school police were responsible for investigating graffiti, because school officials lacked the expertise to identify taggers by their monikers.

“We really didn’t have the resources to pursue graffiti vandals,” said Bob Barker, chief of the Santa Ana school district’s four-member police force. “We also didn’t have a data bank to keep track of the vandals. Before we started working with the Police Department, it was pretty much catch-as-catch-can.”

Now, school officials contact officers Ruiz and Marshall, who often are able to immediately identify the vandals using a comprehensive file of monikers.

“We keep a tagger list of every person arrested and every tag crew that has been identified,” Marshall said. “When people at the schools spot vandalism, they take a picture of it and forward it to us. If we know who the people who did it are, we’ll sit down with them, interview them and advise them of their rights.”

The two officers have worked with some Santa Ana schools since 1992, but they didn’t begin sharing information with the entire Santa Ana school district until last September.

“The Police Department wasn’t aware that the schools were getting as heavily tagged as they were,” Ruiz said. “It made sense for us to share information, because we know a lot of information about the tagging crews and the schools can provide information about the students.”

Three years ago, graffiti was so bad at Carr Intermediate School that it became a ritual among custodians to tour the school every morning armed with special cleaning equipment and supplies.

“The first thing the custodians had to do was spray over the graffiti,” Principal Vincent Tafolla said. “It was almost a daily thing.”

Now, with the help of Ruiz and Marshall and a new fence, vandalism is down at the school.

Although taggers still deface property throughout the Santa Ana school district, school officials said they believe vandals are less likely to target campuses because they know there is a greater chance they will be caught.

“Kids are smart,” Rodriguez said. “Word gets around that the police are involved, and I think the kids are thinking twice about doing it.”

Last fall, Ruiz and Marshall staked out Roosevelt Elementary and caught seven boys who were responsible for $7,000 in vandalism damage at the school and another campus.

“They’ve done a world of good,” Rodriguez said.