Effort under way to make arrests, paint over marks
By Jason B. Gumer
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Delray Beach is getting a paint job it doesn’t need.
Incidents of graffiti are growing, city officials say. Code enforcement and sanitation officers reported 16 incidents between Jan. 8 and Feb. 3, with several incidents since, said city spokesman Ivan Ladizinsky.
“Graffiti goes in peaks and valleys -- you get a lot and then none at all -- and right now we are at a peak,” said Al Berg, assistant director of community improvement. “We seem to be getting not so much gang-related graffiti but lots of kids putting their signatures on different things.”
The city has launched a campaign to combat the problem.
“Some of this might be gang related, and some is probably by wannabes, but all of it looks ridiculous, and it is not something we will tolerate,” Mayor Jeff Perlman said. “It’s something that makes you feel less safe about where you live.”
The police are investigating cases and arresting offenders, Perlman said.
“We recently arrested a juvenile who went out and did $20,000 worth of damage by tagging buildings and under the Intracoastal Waterway,” he said.
The 16 city-reported incidents were concentrated in two areas. The majority occurred in an upscale square area bordered by North Federal Highway, North Swinton Avenue, Northeast Fourth Street and Northeast Second Street.
The other area was between Southwest Eighth and 10th streets.
However, incidents are not limited to those two areas.
“We’ve seen it all over the city in various places, some are small markings, some are large, and many are really artistic,” Berg said.
Police, code enforcement and sanitation officers have been instructed to look for graffiti and to report incidents immediately, Ladizinsky said.
“We get it every day,” Berg said. “Once notified, we will go ahead and take a photograph of it, write down the location of where it is and then we paint over it immediately if it is on public property. If it’s on private property, we give the homeowner 24 hours to paint it out, and then we will paint over it.”
Light posts, telephone and electronic boxes and street signs are popular targets. “We find it anywhere where people drive by,” Berg said. “The whole idea is to get their mark seen.”
Copyright 2007 South Florida Sun-Sentinel