LAKEWOOD —About five blocks east of city government offices, Lakewood community services youth coordinator Shane Littleton tackled what seems to be a never-ending task.
Rolling up to a utility box in his city truck towing a power washer, he quickly dispatched a graffiti tag using an over-the-counter cleaner and cloth rag. A block away, vandals had spray-painted a light pole. Five minutes later, it’d been blasted away with the power washer.
“It’s spotty — there’s no rhyme or reason as to why these tags show up where they do,” Littleton said. “The traditional hot-spots like Sheridan and Alameda, there could be nothing for a few weeks, then someplace like Green Mountain is all of a sudden getting tagged.”
Almost 10 years since the city formed a task force to tackle what Lakewood Police Sgt. George Hinkle said was a “critical mass” problem, graffiti reports have dramatically trended downward.
Initiatives started in 2006 managed to fight back what most consider a blight, but those numbers skyrocketed from 884 reports in 2012 to 1,541 in 2013. Quarterly maps show hot spots running along major corridors on Lakewood’s east side. Since 2013, they’ve gone down from dozens of those hot spots to a smattering of blue and green, meaning lower frequency.
From 2014 through the first quarter of this year, numbers have dropped 36 percent. In 2014 there were 881 incidents, with 278 in the first quarter compared to 177 in the first quarter of 2015.
Every city official stressed it’s next to impossible to keep track of accurate numbers: Some community members don’t report it; sometimes city workers will simply clean it up as they drive through town.
Ward 3 Councilman Pete Roybal lives in what was one of the highest graffiti areas in the city. He said like graffiti, overgrown weeds or flood issues has streamlined the process of responding to complaints.
What used to take four weeks for a city response can now be done in about five days, Roybal said. Graffiti was the top of his platform when he first ran for council three years ago, saying ward residents were fed up with the chronic problem.
“Being so close to the border of Denver has a lot to do with why this has always been an issue for us,” Roybal said. “They push and push and push, and if you don’t do something about it, it gets out of hand really quick.”
He attributes part of the turnaround to local organizations like the Boys and Girls Club, churches and other nonprofits that provide activities for youth.
Teens caught tagging end up spending Saturday afternoons cleaning up the mess as part of the diversion or probation process.
“We really try to look at what else is going on in their lives and address those issues as well, whether it’s drugs, alcohol or a tough home environment,” Littleton said.
In Lakewood, private property owners are responsible for clean-up, which makes abatement faster but can also mean tickets, fines and visits by code enforcement, something Roybal is hoping to change during his next term.
“My feeling is, we’re victimizing the businesses and residentials twice, because they not only get tagged but the burden to clean it up is on them or they lose money paying fines,” he added.
Hinkle said perpetrators run the gamut from kids getting their kicks to tagging crews that will fight to defend their area, all the way to gangs peddling drugs and other criminal activity.
Lakewood police meet once a month with a metro-wide task force to talk about trends and recent arrests.
“This is one of those areas that dovetails with the broken windows theory of crime,” Hinkle said. “Typically a kid moves into an area, begins tagging, and it radiates out from that home base. If no one is cleaning it up, then he hooks up with his buddies and it just gets bigger.”
Austin Briggs: 303-954-1729, abriggs@denverpost.com or twitter.com/abriggs
