Graffiti on the upswing

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA -- It happened again Saturday.

Ernie Feeney woke up, looked across the street and saw it --

2-foot-high letters spray-painted on the fences at Paularino Elementary

School.

Her husband, John, said such graffiti has again become a common sight

in his Mesa North neighborhood.

“My real feeling is the city does an excellent job cleaning up

graffiti but a lousy job preventing graffiti,” he said. “I have no

enthusiasm for calling just to get it painted over. I want it stopped at

its source. Some people in the city try to downplay it, saying it’s just

‘tagging,’ but this is gang graffiti. It yells at people that we have

gang members in the neighborhood, and who wants to live in a neighborhood

with gang members?”

Dale Birney, spokesman for the Costa Mesa Police Department, said

graffiti occurs in inconsistent cycles.

“Sometimes we go for a while without having any, other times we seem

to find new signs every day,” he said, adding that there have been many

incidents lately.

John Feeney, who is part of the Mesa North Crime Prevention Committee,

said graffiti is back on the upswing of its cycle, after dropping for a

few months after May, when the City Council upped the reward from $500 to

$2,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of graffiti

artists.

But convictions are elusive, and nobody has yet collected the $2,000

reward.

Two people last year were paid after information they reported led to

convictions, and one person in 1999 received a reward.

But the last reward was earned before the ante was raised, although

the $500 wasn’t distributed until a conviction in June.

Birney said arrests and convictions for graffiti are difficult because

people involved choose locations and times when they are unlikely to be

seen.

“They are not doing it to be seen while they are doing it, they are

doing it to convey a message or to stake out boundaries or whatever,” he

said. “This type of crime is much more difficult to get a conviction on

if we don’t have eyewitness accounts.”

Graffiti is a problem because it is unsightly, it damages private

property, and it decreases the beauty of the neighborhood, but residents

could be reluctant to inform the police because they fear retaliation or

just don’t want to get involved, Birney said.

“I would encourage people to let us assist them in maintaining the

integrity of their neighborhood, whether or not they would like to get

involved with the reward program,” he said. “We need as much help as we

can get in this community. The best way to prevent this type of thing

from repeating itself is to bring the people responsible to justice.”

QUESTION

TAGGED OUT

Are you noticing a rise in graffiti? If so, what do you think should

be done about it? Call our Readers Hotline at (949) 642-6086 or send

e-mail to dailypilot@latimes.com. Please spell your name and include your

hometown and phone number, for verification purposes only.