Creating work, not art

A gaggle of taggers line up along a graffiti-marred wall beneath a warehouse parking lot and prepare to paint.

These teens, however, wield long-handled rollers and buckets of beige paint instead of spray cans.

As punishment for defacing properties, they're out on a warm Saturday morning erasing the handiwork of fellow vandals, some of whom are comrades, some rivals and some unknown.

A short, dark-haired, freckle-faced boy in a black T-shirt and tan khakis stands out among a bevy of taller boys wearing white T-shirts and blue jeans.

This is the third round of community service for the 17-year-old, who began tagging two years ago for the adrenaline rush. Because he's a juvenile offender, he could disclose only his tagger name, Noem.

"It was fun, putting things where they're not supposed to be and getting chased," Noem said, telling how he once darted across a freeway to elude capture. "I didn't think I was ever going to get caught. You always get caught."

Noem and the other young offenders have added to a widespread graffiti onslaught that last year wrought an estimated $30 million in property damage throughout Clark County.

Graffiti no longer is an urban aberration, but is also showing up in rural towns and remote sites such as Mount Charleston.

To combat graffiti, a coalition of local governments, police, community groups and private organizations amplified its efforts in 2006.

Anti-graffiti messages were promoted in schools, and penalties were stiffened for repeat or serial offenders.

The Turn in a Tagger program was established, offering a $500 reward for any tip leading to an arrest. Since then, the number of tipsters calling a graffiti hot line rose to 5,120 in 2007, compared with 2,977 tallied in 2005, the year before the program was created, according to county code enforcement.

This year, April was designated Graffiti Awareness Month. But it's a never-ending battle, authorities say.

"Graffiti is a lot like traffic problems," Las Vegas police Detective Scott Black said. "They're never going to go away, but we can bring them to a manageable level."

BATTLE GROWING

Police nabbed some 500 taggers in 2007, up from a couple of hundred arrests several years ago, Black said. He credits the higher arrest rate partly to the beefed-up anti-graffiti campaign and also to police officers being trained to treat such vandalism as a serious crime instead of a nuisance.

Graffiti is the leading cause of property damage in Clark County, Black said.

Roughly 7,000 markings must be erased in the unincorporated areas of the Las Vegas Valley alone.

The county buys 20,000 gallons of paint to cover the damage and employs four full-time workers and one part-timer to whitewash graffiti.

Paint is dispensed at no cost to volunteers, neighborhood groups or anyone who wants to white-out graffiti.

The graffiti-abatement program costs about $800,000 yearly in staff and supplies, said Joe Boteilho, the county's code-enforcement chief.

That doesn't count the other departments, including Parks and Recreation, Public Works and Facilities, that clean up graffiti, too, Boteilho said. He noted that juvenile and adult offenders chip in, as do inmates on a work-release program.

Two years ago, the area real estate association got involved because graffiti was hurting home values in some neighborhoods, said Cindy Lucas, a county code-enforcement supervisor. An outdoor advertising firm, tired of having its signs defaced, also joined in.

The growing teamwork has reduced the average time between complaint and cleanup from 21 days to nine days, according to a county estimate.

Anti-graffiti measures have spread to vendors. A law requires stores to lock up spray paint, Boteilho said, because graffiti vandals tend to steal the cans instead of buy them.

Police compile photos of graffiti that can be linked to a single vandal. When that person is arrested, their misdemeanors can be rolled together into a felony charge, Black said.

Neighborhood watches, known as pride zones, have become more vigilant in removing graffiti, snapping pictures of the damage and recording when and where the vandalism was found.

Graffiti should never be allowed to linger, as it invites more vandalism, crime and blight, said a woman who heads a pride zone near Walnut and Craig roads.

"Once it goes up, it comes down. I think it gives a message to the vandals," said Cari, the pride zone's captain, who asked that her last name not be used to avoid letting criminals find out where she lives.

"Graffiti symbolizes crime and gangs," Black said, which hurts property values.

MAIN CULPRITS

Tagging crews account for most of the damage, Black said. Gangs mainly use graffiti to relay messages to members, he said.

In contrast, tagging crews try to one-up each other by spraying their signature markings at the highest volume, and in the most visible places.

Freeway signs are turning into popular targets because they're conspicuous and risky to mount, making the tags tougher for competing crews to emulate, Black said.

Crews are made up of two or three people, usually males, he said. Members' ages range from early teens to late 20s.

Rival crews often spray-paint over each other's tags in a duel for supremacy.

The feuds can escalate into brawls with fists and weapons, Black said, noting skirmishes between crews lead to as many as 10 shootings a year.

The Internet has given taggers a larger audience, magnifying their pursuit of notoriety, Black said.

Outlaw scrawlers displayed photos of their graffiti on personal Web sites until authorities started tracing the sites to the taggers, he said. Now they showcase their vandalism on MySpace to an underground following.

During a recent Saturday cleanup, a group of ROTC volunteers worked alongside the taggers.

Angel Arias, 17, a Clark High School student, said he and his comrades were erasing graffiti partly to earn a ribbon and also because it's satisfying to thwart this type of vandalism.

"It looks a lot better than it was -- all that crap that was on there," Arias said, glancing at the damp beige paint coating a wall. "It keeps spreading. More (taggers) come in to compete if you don't clean it up."

Later, the teen offenders were taken to a dirt field and told to paint over graffiti that defaced a fence bordering a trailer park. A tall, husky young man smiled while he eagerly covered the letters "TNG" scrawled on a high-voltage pillar.

GRAFFITI A CRIME, NOT ART

To those who might view graffiti as a maverick art form done by daring renegades, Boteilho has a simple rebuttal.

"It's not art without permission," he said, even if it's a spectacular mural.

Graffiti artist is an oxymoron, Lucas said. Criminals, not artists, damage people's property and force them to pay hefty sums to clean it up.

Besides, most graffiti in the valley has no aesthetic merit, but is a bunch of ugly scrawling, she said.

Black agrees.

"We never had the muralists here," he said, the way Los Angeles and New York have.

A few attempts were made to designate graffiti walls, but Black said the taggers would deface the work, just as they mark up commercial murals and billboards.

Black has arrested hundreds of taggers over the years, and few described themselves as artists. Most told him they got a thrill breaking the law, he said. "It has nothing to do with art."

Kevin Niday, a probation officer who was overseeing Noem's group in the graffiti removal, said he has gotten a couple taggers into art school. But only a couple.

That's too bad, Niday said, because many have talent.

He suspects that increased public awareness has snuffed out the more illustrative graffiti, because vandals now have less time to work before someone calls the police.

Most of the elaborate murals can be found in the tunnels near the Rio, he added.

Noem told of how he displayed a canvas of his graffiti art at Workmens Clothing at Boulevard Mall. But when he was arrested, police confiscated the canvas from his home along with his colored markers.

Iceberg Slick, a local pop artist, said many taggers, deep down, would like to develop their talent.

They tell police they tag to be defiant and outgun competitors, but much of that posturing is street machismo aimed at authority figures, he said.

"There's actually more kids that want validation as artists than as vandals," Iceberg Slick said. "You can incarcerate them all day, but all you're doing is institutionalizing them. Let's take this tagging and redirect it into something positive."

TRYING TO REACH KIDS

Prevention has begun to catch up with enforcement, Boteilho said.

Anti-graffiti posters are placed in schools, some stating how many graffiti vandals were arrested.

D.A.R.E. helped sponsor a contest in which kids submitted anti-graffiti illustrations. The winning graphic was placed on the outside of a bus that broadcasts the message, Boteilho said.

Only time will reveal whether these educational seeds will take root in young minds, Boteilho said.

Black believes that while preventive measures are worthy, the best remedy for some chronic offenders is a trip to jail.

Noem falls into that category. His third arrest led to a stint in juvenile detention, an experience he says was bad enough to make him swear off tagging for good.

"You feel tempted, but I don't want to do it. I don't want to go back to juvie," said Noem, his shirt and pants splotched with tan paint. "It was bad."

Noem carried a roller back to where a group of peers were applying paint to a mish-mash of letters unintelligible to the average adult but a clear code to youths versed in tagging.

He hunched over and pushed the roller in long, slow, methodical strokes, as though creating a blank wall were a work of art.

Contact reporter Scott Wyland at swyland@reviewjournal.com or 702-455-4519.