Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and other city officials, concerned about a 50 percent rise in graffiti abatement over the past year, hosted a brainstorming summit Wednesday on ways to stymie the nuisance.
“This is a call to action,” Hickenlooper told a crowd of about 200 officials from public and private organizations.
Major cities that have tackled their own graffiti problems sent representatives to share ideas that have worked – as well as those that haven’t. In San Jose, Calif., Rob Boyles has run a program that saw incidents of graffiti go from 71,000 in 1999 to 129 in the latest survey, he said.
“That is what we call the miracle in San Jose,” Boyles told the group.
San Jose’s program is a collaborative effort among city agencies, Boyles said, and involves nearly 3,000 volunteers.
“Any city that does not have a voluntary program where you can hand out supplies, you are really going to have a tough row to hoe,” he said.
But Boyles said the program did make mistakes. For instance, he told the crowd that San Jose tried to have a “free wall” where people were allowed to spray graffiti.
“It lasted three days,” Boyles said, because the wall only served to attract more graffiti in the surrounding neighborhood.
In Albuquerque, people caught “tagging” face not only criminal prosecution but also a civil lawsuit, Stella Candelaria said.
Candelaria is associate director of Albuquerque’s Clean City program. She said of the 171 civil suits the city has filed, 132 of the defendants were parents – drawing applause from the crowd.
“We have not had any repeat offenders on any civil suit that we have had,” Candelaria said.
But some participants were concerned that many solutions were heavy-handed considering much graffiti is done by juveniles.
“Just criminalizing youth is what I’m against,” said Francisco Gallardo of the Gang Rescue and Support Project.
Still, City Council President Michael Hancock said graffiti goes beyond simple vandalism. Graffiti makes “a tremendous impact on the psyche of our community,” he said. “It injects a sense of fear.”
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 303-954-1657 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
