‘Chaka’ Gets Year in Jail for Stealing Sneakers

Chaka, the notorious graffiti vandal who tagged everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to the walls at Disneyland and later asserted he’d found God, apparently has yet to mend his ways.

Daniel Ramos was sentenced to a year and three months in jail Wednesday for stealing Nike shoes from a Mervyn’s department store and for violating the terms of his probation in earlier convictions, authorities said.

Ramos achieved notoriety after covering an estimated 10,000 surfaces across the state with his moniker. It took authorities three years to catch him. He was arrested in 1990, as he scrawled “Chaka” on a Lincoln Heights traffic light.

He had finally completed all the probationary terms that stemmed from a series of arrests, convictions and sentences on the graffiti charges when he was rearrested last month, Deputy City Atty. Terry Siegel said.

The probation violations he was sentenced for Wednesday relate to drug paraphernalia charges and vandalism involving a broken window, Siegel said.

Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Michael Duffey sentenced Ramos to a year for the petty theft and an additional three months for the probation violation.