It’s the scourge of any community. Graffiti splattered across a
vacant building, a stop sign or bridge abutment promoting the sign
of a tagging crew. The scrawls and scribbles can be seen throughout
just about any town in America.
It’s the scourge of any community. Graffiti splattered across a vacant building, a stop sign or bridge abutment promoting the sign of a tagging crew. The scrawls and scribbles can be seen throughout just about any town in America. They can be the beginning of the decline of the quality of life in a city that lets it proliferate.
We often boast about what a great place Morgan Hill is to live. Recreation, restaurants and open space draw urbanites from throughout the Bay Area to our little slice of paradise. But rampant graffiti is an eyesore that can lead to a decrease in property values and even an increase in crime.
Exact numbers of graffiti incidents were unavailable, but Ron Nelson, graffiti abatement officer, said tagging has gone up by “at least 25 percent” since a year ago.
“The city doesn’t want to tolerate any graffiti, so I do anything I possibly can to contain it,” Nelson told reporter Michael Moore. So where does that leave us? First, it costs an estimated $25,000 a year to combat the vandalism. And, while that may be a small amount, we need to step up as a community and help Nelson.
There are several things we can do as a community.
n Volunteers are needed to eradicate the graffiti as soon as possible. We need to be as aggressive as possible in removing it as quickly as possible.
n If you see graffiti, report it. Police use the information to create an online database into which they can enter photos, dates and locations of tags that show up repeatedly. The database is shared by other law enforcement agencies in the area, and allows authorities to keep track of the damage and the potential whereabouts of suspects.
n Perhaps we need to offer a reward. A Times online commenter, gomhii, claims to know some of the taggers. Perhaps a reward is in order. Maybe a free year’s use of the skatepark or a cash reward would encourage people to report offenders.
