Help take a bite out of graffiti

In case you failed to notice the vandalism on walls, signs and buildings throughout the valley, Clark County has declared Saturday Graffiti Awareness Day.

Commissioners Susan Brager, Chris Giunchigliani and Lawrence Weekly will be giving away paint and brushes and helping with graffiti cleanup efforts Saturday morning. Officials from Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas are to take part in similar activities in their communities.

"As a Realtor, I see the impacts of graffiti first-hand," Brager said Tuesday as the commission adopted a proclamation for Graffiti Awareness Day. "It does effect property values and it does seem to attract crime."

Graffiti cleanup costs residents, business owners and government entities an estimated $30 million a year, said Detective Scott Black, who heads up the graffiti investigation section for the Metropolitan Police Department's gang unit.

"It's the number one property crime in Southern Nevada without a doubt," Black said. "This is a test of wills. They tag it; we clean it up."

The war on graffiti will escalate on Oct. 1, when a new state law takes effect that increases the penalties for vandalism and criminalizes the possession of spray paint and indelible markers in certain places.

Under the new law, signed by Gov. Jim Gibbons June 13, a misdemeanor charge could be brought against would-be vandals caught with "graffiti implements" under an overpass or bridge, inside a flood channel, or at a public facility such as a community center, park, or city bus.

Graffiti implements are defined as spray paint, broad-tipped indelible markers or "other item that may be used to propel or apply fluid that is not soluble in water."

"It will give law enforcement more of a tool to start investigating this stuff," Black said.

Another tool came on line late last year and is already producing results.

More than 280 tips have been logged and 107 arrests made since Dec. 1, when the Turn-in-a-Tagger program was started by Las Vegas police, the county and Crime Stoppers of Nevada.

"A lot of the tips are from the taggers themselves," Black said, who acknowledged that some of the signs put up to advertise the program have since been tagged.

So far this year, the separate, county-run Southern Nevada Graffiti Hotline has received more than 6,000 reports of vandalism.

That's and increase from 4,000 by this time last year, said Cindy Lucas, code enforcement supervisor for Clark County's graffiti abatement program.

Other than summer recently getting under way, Lucas said there is no particular significance to the designation of Saturday as Graffiti Awareness Day.

"We do see a higher incidence of graffiti in the summer, when kids are out of school," she said.

The county's paint and brush giveaway will take place from 8 a.m. to noon at the Hollywood Recreation Center at 1650 South Hollywood Blvd., and the West Flamingo Senior Center at 6255 West Flamingo Road.

Among the sites scheduled for cleanup Saturday are large block walls on Las Vegas Boulevard east of Lamb Boulevard and at the intersections of Charleston Boulevard and Sloan Lane, Charleston and Beesley Drive, and Cheyenne Avenue and Walnut Road.