The city of Santee is doing its best to deter and penalize
those who make a sport of defacing property.
The city has a track record of prosecuting vandals
regardless of the size or frequency of their illegal graffiti. One teenager was recently prosecuted for
defacing a picnic table at a city park with a marking pen. The damage was only $25, but the youth paid a
fine and was sentenced to 40 hours of community service. Three years ago, a
prolific graffiti tagger was arrested, convicted and ordered to repay the city
$20,000 in restitution.“It doesn’t make a difference how big or small it is, graffiti is graffiti,” said Community Service Director Bill Maertz. “If you deface public property, we’ll find you and you’ll pay.”
For the past five years, Santee has participated in the
regional Graffiti Tracker program, a sophisticated, web-based graffiti
reporting system that creates a data base that allows crime analysts to
identify each tagger’s graphic signature.
Taggers are actually providing new evidence against themselves each time
they leave their mark.
The city’s Public
Services staff moves quickly – usually within 24 hours—to erase graffiti after
it is reported on the city’s graffiti hotline or on the city’s smartphone app.
“We utilize the ‘broken window’ theory,” said Sgt. Kelly
Moody, referring to the criminology theory that responding quickly to vandalism
or dumping when the damage is small prevents similar crimes from proliferating.
“As soon as we
identify (graffiti), we immediately try to take care of the problem so it
doesn’t get worse,” said Moody, who heads the Community Oriented Policing and
Problem Solving Team at the Sheriff’s Dept. Santee Station.
