American Graffiti

Graffiti summit offers up ideas to fight problem

By David Kassabian (Contact)
Originally published 05:09 a.m., June 27, 2008
Updated 05:09 a.m., June 27, 2008

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Eddie Seal/Special to the Caller-Times Ben Teed, a detective with the Corpus Christi Police Department, addresses graffiti in the city during a summit Thursday at Del Mar College's Center for Economic Development. From July 17, 2007, through June 5 of this year, officers arrested 106 graffiti suspects.
Eddie Seal/Special to the Caller-Times Ben Teed, a detective with the Corpus Christi Police Department, addresses graffiti in the city during a summit Thursday at Del Mar College's Center for Economic Development. From July 17, 2007, through June 5 of this year, officers arrested 106 graffiti suspects.

Diana Hinojosa and her two sons, Ernest and Nick, have become accustomed to waking up in their Ray High School area neighborhood and finding a fence tagged.

For them, graffiti has been a constant the past few years. They said feelings of anger mixed with helplessness begin to set in when property is tagged for the third or fourth time.

"We see the taggers or know who they are and the police don't do anything," said Ernest Hinojosa, who added that his fence was hit Wednesday night. "We're here to see what they say, because I don't think the police take it seriously. ... We want results, not just someone saying, 'We'll repaint your fence.' "

The Hinojosas were three of about 40 residents at the city's first graffiti summit, a collaboration of several police groups with local and state officials, to brainstorm how to get people more involved in fighting graffiti.

Responses from a panel of police officers, elected officials and community leaders to the problem were about as varied as the panel's makeup.

Officials with the city's solid waste department asked residents to fill out consent forms that allow the graffiti eradication truck to remove graffiti from private property. State Rep. Solomon Ortiz Jr., D-Corpus Christi, called for more resources to get the word out on the penalties for graffiti.

District Attorney Carlos Valdez said his office is taking a hard look at ending plea bargains when it comes to graffiti cases. Pete Peralta, assistant chief deputy with the Nueces County Sheriff's Department, said the greater use of inmate labor on public land could help get graffiti erased faster.

Carlos Cavazos, chief of the Corpus Christi Independent School District Police Department, said he would like to see heavier sentences.

"Anything to deter these kids," Cavazos said.

Corpus Christi police Capt. Mark Schauer, who oversees the department's recently expanded graffiti task force, said he understands the frustrations of residents because the graffiti in certain neighborhoods keeps coming back.

"There's a small number of adults and juveniles casing an extreme amount of damage," he said. "It takes moments to put up graffiti and weeks and months to take it down."

Schauer said community involvement can be a tremendous tool at fighting graffiti, in many situations surpassing the impact of law enforcement alone.

"The solution is going to be grass roots community involvement," he said. "It would far supersede anything we at the department can do."

While no hard numbers exist on the extent of graffiti in Corpus Christi, Schauer said earlier this month that he's starting to see less graffiti around town.

From July 17, 2007, through June 5 of this year, officers arrested 106 graffiti suspects. About half the suspects were adults. All but two of those arrested were males, the youngest 12 and the oldest 49.

Streamlined enforcement and a new graffiti truck and city graffiti ordinance have helped erase part of the problem. As of last month, 134,309 square feet of surface at 1,332 locations had been cleaned up by the city's new graffiti eradication truck since it went into service in June 2007.

To fill out a graffiti removal consent form online, visit www.cctexas.com/police/.

Contact David Kassabian at 886-3778 or kassabiand@caller.com