Worker Hopes Graffiti Vandals Get the Message

Warren Gaston meandered along the Ventura River bottom in his pickup, on the lookout for graffiti.

When he found some scrawled along the rocks and support beams of a Highway 33 overpass, Gaston jumped out of his truck and, with a sweep or two of his power sprayer, covered the markings with paint.

“It’s fast,” said the maintenance worker for Ventura’s Public Works Department. “That’s why I love it.”

Gaston, 54, is the muscle behind Ventura’s graffiti hotline, the phone number the city’s property owners can call to have graffiti removed for free.

But Gaston also goes on regular patrols in search of graffiti, cleaning it off buildings, telephone poles and utility boxes. He uses chemicals to wipe marker scribblings off street signs and paint to cover symbols sprayed onto walls. He has even climbed onto roofs to remove writing visible from the Ventura Freeway.

Some graffiti vandals and gang members spray notes on walls, saying: “You can’t stop us.” But Gaston paints over such messages, returning to a site each time graffiti reappears.

His work has had an effect. Average monthly calls to the city’s hotline dropped from 150 in 1995 when the program began to about 75 last year.

“Kids get discouraged,” said Rick Herriott, who supervises the Public Works Department. “He’s painted over areas so many times that he has deterred them from coming back.”

Oxnard, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks have similar hotline programs. In 1993, Simi Valley hired a private contractor to remove graffiti daily. Since then, the number of cases reported to the city’s hotline dropped from 4,038 to 768 in 2001.

In Thousand Oaks, which began keeping records in 1995, the number of graffiti incidents stayed around 350 until last year, when 569 cases were reported.

Police say graffiti should be removed immediately to curb gang activity and prevent a drop in property values.

“Certain gang members will go into someone else’s territory. They will spray paint the walls and say they were here, what are you going to do about it?” said Brian Bishop, graffiti investigator for the Oxnard Police Department. “It’s basically a challenge to the other gang.”

Gaston starts his day at 6:30 a.m., working weekdays--except every other Friday--until about 4 p.m. On his days off, other public works employees cover for him.

Each morning, Gaston checks messages on the hotline, then arranges to visit each location reported within 24 to 48 hours. He also patrols city streets, visiting frequently targeted areas.

On a recent day, he checked a culvert off Anacapa Street, inspected the sound walls along Highway 126 near Mound Elementary School, and removed a racial epithet from a flood control channel along Telegraph Road.

The graffiti often reappears soon after he cleans it. Gaston said he doesn’t get discouraged.

“There’s always going to be teenagers. And as they grow up and quit and grow out of it, there’s always someone else who’s going to come and take their place. With the graffiti, at least we can clean it up, and we can do it pretty quick.”

Gaston also works closely with the Ventura Police Department, taking pictures of each graffiti vandal’s name or symbol. Police can then use that information as evidence in court.

In Simi Valley, a youth was ordered to pay $9,200 in restitution after being caught spray painting a number of places in town.

It costs Ventura $74,000 annually to run the graffiti program, including paint, brushes, rollers and other supplies, as well as Gaston’s salary and the maintenance of his city-owned truck.

Gaston uses tan, white or gray paint to cover the markings. He said he tries to work with property owners to match their buildings’ color when possible. To prevent a patchwork of squares, he often paints an entire wall one color and then uses the same color to cover graffiti that might later appear.

He said most owners don’t mind him painting their buildings. They would rather see the graffiti cleaned up.

Young Yun, owner of Westside Market on Ramona Street in Ventura, is one of them. He calls the hotline at least once a month to have graffiti removed from the side of his store. He said the removal program helps his business.

“When there is a lot of graffiti on the building, everybody is scared. [They think] something’s wrong,” Yun said. “When the building is clean, they are comfortable to come in here.”