Oct
3
Does anyone have any thoughts on all the graffiti that has been cropping up in the neighborhood?
I do. It sucks. So what can we do about it?
Last week I called the real estate agent who is listing the green, 2-story commercial property on 53rd near Duval (listed at $775,000, if anyone’s curious), let her know the building had been tagged, and within a couple of days the graffiti had been covered up—quite well, too. The same paint color, even. Nice.
Any other ideas? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments section. (Comments are moderated.)
Here’s the official City of Austin page on graffiti.
Highlights:
The Austin Youth Development Project, with adult supervision and with written permission, will come to your property and remove graffiti for you at no charge.
Call 3-1-1 or 512-974-1028 to find out how to obtain such help.
You can enter a Service Request directly to us through the Customer Service Request System and choosing the Graffiti Abatement service request type.
The prevailing wisdom on the topic is pretty unanimous—swift and consistent removal are the most effective tools against the graffiti problem. So how can we achieve that?
Here’s a commercial for a new product that looks pretty promising:
Comments
13 Responses to “Graffiti”
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My car and others on Link have beeb tagged three times in the past six months. One time a neighbor caught the perps in the act and told the cops. The cops did nothing. Now what do we do? I think Grafitti falls under gang violence within the Police dept., probably not very high the list next to murder, rape, drugs, etc.
Someone (probably the same culprit) has been tagging the street itself. Example - on North Loop near Duval. Pretty annoying, i think contacting the city via 311 works.
The west side of the Vacuum cleaner business at North Loop and Lamar was tagged pretty big time last week. The taggers can work out of sight of Lamar.
Home Depot sells a spray on product that works very well on metal and hardi plank siding. I clean the metal fence on Chesterfield and Franklin all the time. I once did it within an hour of it being tagged. That REALLY sends a message. This ‘red carrot’ guy seems to have taken a break - or hopefully someone drowned him in a bathtub - it was him that tagged the stop signs on Chesterfield.
I offered to paint over the tags at the old Ararat but “Phara” - that is remodeling wanted to wait - until she is ready to repaint it all. but letting it stay there - even for a day is not good - ‘they’ get the idea that they control things - covering it up is the point.
311 works - but it can take awhile. I think it is unacceptable for a merchant - who doesn’t live in the neighborhood - to leave graffiti. We can - if necessary - write a letter on behalf of NNA.
I think a NNA letter would be a great idea. It may not work, but we should at least try.
they have been very active on howards/parkers. a few days ago a huge mural appeared on the hangar door. parkers had been hit a week earlier, the city was quick to cover that up. parker’s gets hit quite a bit.
things i’ve noticed in previous graffiti incidents, they followed the 7 bus line. i actually think i meet one of these hoodlums a couple of months ago waiting on the 7 north bound at the stop in-front of hyde park grill. he was marking the capmetro trash receptacle. i also noticed he had a plastic shopping bag with three spray paint cans inside (heard the marbles rolling around within).
i recognized the person as one of the suspects that was living at the carlton during our last graffiti bout. i also reported this person perviously to the postal inspectors for going through neighbors mail boxes and taking mail.
Our neighborhood association was founded waayyy back in 1998-ish to address a graffiti problem that had popped up. Back then we were going out and painting over stuff ourselves which actually put some neighbors in danger.
The problem continues to pop up as new individuals discover our surfaces and attempt to leave their piddle-marks to mark territory.
The best way to address the problem is quickly and directly calling 311 and reporting it to the Graffiti hotline. The city will get a crew out within 48 hours to paint over it. They really do!
And for those who think it’s really a matter of free-speech or art-in-the-streets, we can bring a rep from the APD Graffiti Task Force over to speak to a neighborhood meeting and explain why it is better to stamp it out fast.
Hope this helps.
Nell Newton
307 Franklin
I know that some folks in skyview are already in contact with a cop on this one. They’re actually aware of one of the taggers, a kid who lives in the apartments on koenig if I recall.
Maybe if more of us called 311 to report these things, the city would feel the pressure to respond fast.
But does anyone know if the city makes an effort to do a good job? Or do they just paint a block of white over it and call it fixed?
The kid in the apts. just west of the Howards is the one I call ‘carrot top’. You have seen his work - he even did FUUC church over on Grover. He skulks about in fear now - since he knows we know who he is.
The city has people on graffiti full time. They head out daily and cover it up - they use good paint and match as close as possible. The individual that heads the program (name escapes me) came to one of our meetings and explained how they can build a case. and they can build quite a case. They can - and do - collect fingerprints from the discarded paint cans (frequently in the creek). What little ‘carrot top’ doesn’t understand is that his highly identifiable ‘tag’ can lead to a score of criminal mischief charges that can really add up. He may think it the equivalent of Bart Simpsons prank calls to Moe’s - but he has created some real problems for himself. It is just a matter of time.
From Kala at Satsuma:
Our experience with the city graffiti removal team has been positive. If you report it they come out within a day or two. At Satsuma, anyway, better lighting would go a long way toward deterring taggers. Also, if all the dumpsters on North Loop that are close to or on the curb were moved away from the street to a less visible location then they would not be such attractive targets for tagging. (or at least the tags would be less noticeable from the street - as actually the dumpster in the alley beside our condo is heavily tagged now that I think about it). Plus it would just look better. For large blank walls, maybe planting fast growing vines on inexpensive trellises would result in an attractive, graffiti deterrent surface.
reassuring to hear that other people care about it, too- an ongoing struggle but easier to claim our neighborhood at this point than to ignore it & it blows up on us-
fyi: last Monday I attended a presentation at work (AISD) by the Gang Task Force of AISD- a new (est. 2006) collaboration between APD and the school district in response to the bus stop shooting of a student a couple of years ago- point being, we were being updated on what’s called criminal street gangs (vs prison gangs) that are specific to Austin and gang-related graffiti was discussed-
it was highly informative, not fear-based stuff but facts about which graffiti to be concerned with, what it looks like, what it’s used for (threats, announce parties, dishonoring another gang/member by crossouts, claim turf- the things we all know) - don’t know if they do community presentations (I’ll ask) but I wonder if we could find it useful to have someone from APD’s Organized Crime Unit or the Graffiti clean-up folks do a similar presentation- would anyone like to hear about it? I found it interesting to hear them talk about gang activity specific to Austin, which gangs are in which areas, especially since my work is done on home visits in this area of Austin (and oh yes, we have them here, folks- not like in Dove Springs, but they are around this area)-
anyway, something that Fred and I noted when we were walking up to Half Price was a stop sign at the corner of Chesterfield & Nelray (I think that’s the intersection- will doublecheck before calling 311) and look at the backside, guys- fascinating! three different tags have been there recently, one named Posse, and they’ve been “crossing out” one another’s names- ditto with the trash can at the North Loop Food Store- it’s the same kind of crossing out stuff- it’s been interesting to try to ‘read’ some of the messages
just the reality/price of living so close to the urban core- but let’s keep covering it, ok?
the stop sign is at Guadalupe/Nelray; called 311 - they’ll cover in 7-10 days- check it out before they do; it’s rather interesting (well, okay, to me anyway
I’m the APD graffiti detective and I want to help. I’ll be speaking to your association soon to give you some ideas and ways we can work together. We’ve already started and I think are making some improvements.
Feel free to email me your graffiti photos and keep making those police reports on incidents, not just 311 reports.. since 311 doesn’t tell the police about them. 311 is no longer a part of APD, but is a City of Austin service referal facility. When calling 311, tell them you want a POLICE REPORT too. They’ll then route you to the people who do that with APD.
If I can help, email or call.
Det. Kevin Bartles
Office: 974-5531
email: Kevin.Bartles@ci.austin.tx.us