Fullerton: a mecca for graffiti?

By ADAM TOWNSEND and JESSICA TERRELL
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
(re-posted without permission)

FULLERTON — Commuters who take the train from Fullerton Transportation Center into L.A. see on the backs of industrial buildings a constantly changing display made up of colorful, stylized letters – the tags of graffiti crews engaged in constant battle with the city, businesses, police and one another.

Along the 600 block Williamson Avenue, for instance, the backs of some industrial buildings are tagged with luminescent fonts. Still other tags are spidery black or white, illegible swirls. Some walls have white blotches where maintenance workers and property owners have tried to stay ahead of graffiti.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Mike Thibodeaux, an Orange County resident, works on a special detail that, in part, targets taggers and other vandalism along the rail lines in L.A. County He said that he worries Fullerton may become a mecca for graffiti artists. He cited the youth culture around Cal State Fullerton, the proliferation of tattoo shops to which graffiti artists often gravitate as a career move and the thriving legitimate arts scene in the town.

Fullerton Maintenance Services Manager Bob Savage said he's seen the square footage of graffiti the city paints over increase sevenfold in the last 15 years.

"When I first started 15 or 16 years ago, I was doing about 100,000 square feet (per year)," Savage said. "Now, I'm up to about 700,000."

He said the city has four employees dedicated to painting over graffiti. The city spends about $250,000 each year on removing graffiti from public property. That cost doesn't include the graffiti removal cost to private property owners.

According to records from the Orange County District Attorney's Office, instances of felony vandalism have nearly quadrupled since the beginning of the decade – 85 defendants were convicted of felony vandalism charges in Orange County in 2000, while 321 were convicted in 2009. Two hundred and fifty-seven defendants have been convicted of felony vandalism in Orange County this year, as of late October.

Those numbers include all types of felony vandalism, not only graffiti.

STEMMING THE TIDE

Thibodeaux said, in his opinion, aggressive enforcement is the only way to help stem the tide of graffiti. In fact, he cites such enforcement in Los Angeles as a reason for the rise in graffiti in Orange County; taggers are being driven south.

He said it was possible to prosecute graffiti crews with laws routinely used to target gangs – for instance, the first injunction in the country targeting taggers is working its way through the courts in L.A. County.

The injunction would prevent identified members of the tagging crew Metro Transit Assassins from associating, a tactic usually used against violent street gangs.

"Technically, these crews fall under the Street Terrorism Protection Act," Thibodeaux said.
He said that though many graffiti groups have no history of violence, rival territorial crews can sometimes engage in violence when one crew covers up the tags of another.

"It's about being famous," Thibodeaux said. "That's the whole goal behind it. They go up on a railroad bridge 100 feet up and risk their lives and prosecution to put their names up there, and someone puts their name over it – people don't like that."

Kevin Smith is a property manager for Spectrum Services, the company that manages a building on Williamson Avenue in Fullerton that is a favorite tagging target.

"I went over there one day and looked and went 'Holy Cow,'" he said. "It's definitely a cost. There will be a wall that's 16 feet by 80 feet and they will paint 80 percent of that. I don't know how you're ever going to stop it. Maybe if the graffiti was happening on Harbor and Commonwealth, they'd be out there giving tickets."

Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney's office said that as a tagging crew grows more and more prolific, its involvement in violence is almost inevitable. Even if a crew starts out dedicated only to painting walls and train cars, members can run afoul of street gangs by painting in their territory, causing violent confrontations.

GRAFFITI AS ART?

Many taggers consider their work to be street art – part of a social and artistic movement.
"You know how skateboarding back in the day was almost illegal?" said Salvador Salinas, a Fullerton-based tagger who goes by the moniker "GOST."

"Now they have expos and skate parks. One of these days, it's going to be the same with grafitti," he said. "It's like a movement. They're trying to get rid of it overnight, but it's happening everywhere in the world."

Salinas said he and his fellow taggers adhere to a kind of street art code.

"If there were programs where we can go paint (legally), I'd be open to that," he said. "I even get mad when I see kids tagging on businesses and trucks and people's houses, tag bangers that carry around guns and try to involve graff with gang banging. They give us a bad name."
Salinas, 19, said he is part of the Fullerton-based ASP crew, or "Artistic Street Platoon."

Salinas is currently in jail on charges of felony and misdemeanor vandalism.

He pleaded not guilty on Nov. 18 to the charges, stemming from graffiti on railcars, sign boxes, and a restaurant, between 2009 and 2010.

Before his most recent arrest in October, Salinas said he was still paying down fines from past tagging-related arrests.

Savage said if his workers see a particular sign or moniker appearing in tags over and over again, they start taking photos and send them to Fullerton Police for investigation.

Fullerton Police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said that Fullerton isn't known to have a big problem with graffiti, and most of the tags that maintenance services covers up are black scrawls, often connected with street gangs. The vandal's purpose is the message, not any artistry in the tag itself, he said.

He said the debate over whether any specific tagger is a criminal vandal or a cutting-edge street artist usually plays out in large cities like L.A. that have large swaths of vacant industrial land, warehouses and acres of concrete.

Savage agreed, saying 70 to 80 percent of the tagging he encounters seems to be simple, thoughtless vandalism.

"Some of it is just beautiful artistry, that's all there is to it," he said. "But most of it is just nuisance stuff."

SOME DECLINES

Fullerton's fight against graffiti differs from the experience of many other cities in Orange County, where the problem appears to be on the decline.

Although graffiti is still a significant problem in nearby Placentia, incidents have dropped over the last five years, with graffiti reports in the city shrinking by more than 40 percent between 2006 and 2010, according to police department records.

Most Orange County cities have started using the Orange County Sheriff Department's online tracking system to share and track graffiti incidents, helping law enforcement officials in OC and neighboring counties identify and prosecute tagging crews. The collaboration, which includes Fullerton, is helping to reduce graffiti in the county, said Ramin Aminloo, senior developer for the sheriff's department.

Since the Tracking Automated and Graffiti Reporting System's implementation three years ago, the amount of cash shelled out by the Orange County Transportation Authority to clean up graffiti has dropped from $283,000 in 2007 to less than $170,000 in 2009, according to the sheriff's department.

Mike "Tewsr" Duncan, 30, of Costa Mesa is a studio artist and freelance graphic designer who started his career as a tagger. He said as a high school student, he was intrigued by the style of graffiti art, and also "the adventure of getting out there and doing something you're not supposed to do."

A lot of purists, Duncan said, assert that the illegality of graffiti is intrinsic to the art form, and any practitioner who moves into the legal realm is a sell-out. But Duncan, who ultimately abandoned the practice, disagrees.

"A lot of people say it's supposed to be illegal and to be a free form thing – they figure graff needs to stay in the streets," he said. "But at some point, you spend all that time on it and you want it to benefit you. You have to get responsible at some point. It's probably better to build revenue in other ways, rather than getting caught and fined."

To report graffiti: Use Fullerton's graffiti hotline at 714-738-3108. Learn more at the city's website.

Contact the writer: 714-704-3719 or jterrell@ocregister.com