Two days before the end of 2005, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law three graffiti bills introduced by a number of Queens City Councilmen.
The first law is designed to promote the cleanup of existing graffiti by fining property owners of commercial buildings and apartment houses of six or more units if they fail to report it, allow the City to clean it, and then keep their properties free of graffiti.
The second law makes it tougher for youngsters to buy the spray paints, indelible markers and etching acids necessary to create the ‘tags.’
The third law allows a person convicted of graffiti crimes to do community service in a removal program designed to deter them from committing new acts of vandalism.
Graffiti is a huge blight on the city and every single neighborhood suffers it to some degree. It lowers property values, and signals other criminal elements that nobody is watching this neighborhood. Not the people who live there, not the property owners and especially not the cops in their patrol cars.
These laws are only a beginning, but not the solution! We need to change the attitude of the city police that catching graffiti artists are good arrests.
We witnessed one such collar. Two males were observed climbing by ladder to the roof of a chain of stores very late one night. The police responded to the 911 call of a burglary in progress and chased them down. Both men were caught with spray paint cans in their possessions. We were disappointed when one of the arresting officers writing up details of the case lamented “we got both of them but they were only graffiti artists.”
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown has trumpeted the convictions of graffiti artists in two recent cases. We applaud his zeal in vigorously prosecuting the individuals in these cases.
But we need stronger laws; community service for the vandals is not good enough. They should pay fines and so should their parents if they are underage.
This is a crime that affects everybody, but it must be treated as a “good collar,” by the police department. Make it an arrest to be proud of. An arrest that stops another quality-of-life crime and sends all criminals the message “We are watching!”
Graffiti . . . signals other criminal elements that nobody is watching this neighborhood.
