Tag Teams to Cheer About

Few things nag at decent folks like the graffiti that turns clean walls into the canvases of vandals. A scarred wall represents more than just a tasteless tag; it’s yet another reminder that many parts of the San Fernando Valley are no longer the kinds of places where residents feel like their streets belong to them. Fed up with the visual gibberish, more and more residents have anointed themselves graffiti busters who paint over tags and work with police to catch the vandals.

The result: Many believe graffiti in the Valley is on the decline, evidence that residents and police working together can stamp out the kind of unacceptable behavior that often makes living in Los Angeles tougher than it ought to be. One group of residents, merchants and police--the Community Tagger Task Force--estimates that reported incidents have dropped from 100 to 150 per month in 1995 to 40 or 60 per month now.

That’s a noticeable drop--no doubt helped along by aggressive police work and prosecution. Police credit the Tagger Task Force with helping to produce 96 convictions. Part of the drop stems from increased attention by police and prosecutors to so-called “quality of life” crimes--small offenses that, left unchecked, wear down a community. But much of the credit lies with ordinary people who have decided to take back their neighborhoods. Residents and merchants don’t act as vigilantes, but they provide police with lots of legwork by taking pictures of graffiti, marking its location and then getting it painted over.

Allowing the marks to stand only emboldens taggers to try again. By getting the mess cleaned up quickly, communities send a message that they don’t intend to let taggers win. Some taggers have told police that the Valley’s efforts to stamp out their work have only pushed them to other parts of Southern California where neighbors have yet to organize. That should signal other neighborhoods that the time to think about stamping out graffiti is before it gets to be a big problem.