Centennial – The southern suburbs are getting serious about wiping out the artwork of vandals, whose graffiti is on the rise in Douglas and Arapahoe counties.
Today, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson will announce a reward program offering $500 to turn in a tagger. In addition, Douglas County leaders are studying tougher ordinances to make the spray-painters pay a steeper price.
“It’s a growing problem, and it’s something we’re concerned about,” said Capt. Mark Fisher of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.
Just a few years ago, Douglas County had only one or two reports of tagging a month; now there are several a week.
“We’re not associating it with gang activity,” said Douglas County sheriff’s investigator Jeff Garner. “But we are associating it with tagging crews operating in other areas as well.”
“A sickening mess”
With the growth in graffiti, many south metro law enforcement agencies and school resource officers have formed a regional task force that’s paying off, Garner said.
They share a database of photographs and locations where the same designs show up.
Earlier this year, a high school student in Highlands Ranch was nabbed when a school resource officer saw a tag sketched on a notebook that matched one scrawled on the outside wall of a supermarket, Garner said.
Graffiti can be either a misdemeanor or felony, based on the amount of property damage. Arapahoe and Douglas officials could think of no one who had served jail time because of vandalism, but fines and restitution can run into thousands of dollars for those apprehended.
“It’s a mess, a sickening mess,” said John Gartrell, an anti-graffiti activist in unincorporated Arapahoe County. “It’s young criminals who need to learn to respect other people’s property.”
Although hard numbers are scarce, graffiti is becoming a cost in addition to an eyesore.
Denver saw a 50 percent increase in tagging in 2006 over 2005, and bordering communities are now seeing graffiti where it’s never been before.
Public and private entities in the city and county of Denver spend $2 million a year combating graffiti, officials said at a summit about graffiti in October.
Communities across the country are dealing with the same issues, said Timothy Kephart, whose company helps Los Angeles and other cities fight taggers.
$10 billion cost in U.S.
A 2005 survey by the Federal Transit Administration found the cost of graffiti to be more than $10 billion a year, with an annual growth rate of 11 percent.
Anywhere graffiti is left up or offenders go unpunished becomes a target, Kephart said, adding that taggers are more likely than other youths to join gangs and commit other crimes. “This isn’t kids being kids or just suburban kids playing tough,” he said. “It’s a crime.”
The city of Centennial’s Youth Commission, a teen advisory board to the City Council, has studied tagging since November. The consensus of the 14- to 19-year-olds is that graffiti is an eyesore that should be dealt with quickly, said commissioner Amy Barber, a junior at Cherry Creek High School.
She said: “The biggest solution is to make the community aware that it’s our responsibility to keep our community safe and clean.”
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
