The Email Interview
with The Web Magazine

If the Web Magazine article about An Anti-Graffiti Web Page brought you to this web site please take a moment to read my responses to their questions. Adam Phillips, Contributing Editor for The Web Magazine, interviewed me by E-mail for the December 1997 issue regarding An Anti-Graffiti Web Page. I was disappointed in the piece because it didn't come close to revealing the meaning behind the real issues. There was a mention of an on-line controversy and but no depth or passion to the message. There was no context to the interview. To keep some perspective on this interview I am offer the content of the email interview as written to Mr. Phillips.

The article said I was a retired police officer. That is not the case. I served as a Reserve Police Officer for six years in service to my community. Two different things.

Mr. Phillips may be a graffiti advocate as evidenced from from his posts in the alt.graffiti newsgroup. He went there seeking opinions from the vandals themselves. His language, in my opinion, showed a predisposition to accept vandalism and I think that came out in his article.

Interview

I believe I am qualified to speak on crime having worked 12 years in law enforcement, six of that as a reserve police officer. In the last three years I have served on the local graffiti abatement task force sponsored by our police department. Along with others, I have spent hundreds of hours using lots of elbow grease to clean up graffiti after the cowardly vandals had sneaked away.

An Anti-Graffiti Web page went on-the-air in May 1995. This is when I started this crusade as you call it. I didn't really consider it a personal crusade however. I would ask, what possible difference would it make that my personal property was or was not damaged by the graffiti. When graffiti appears in a community we all become victims. Someone had to challenge the graffiti advocates celebrating vandalism!

Before the graffiti advocates or Art Crimes can say, "graffiti isn't so bad," they MUST visit communities covered with the scrawlings of misguided gangs and taggers. They MUST speak with graffiti victims and the abatement volunteers that clean up the damage. They MUST speak with the police and the departments of public works. They MUST speak with the people that live in communities surrounded by this blight. They MUST see first hand how neighborhoods are destroyed when everyone stops caring and starts trashing. Graffiti advocates would have you believe that if my own property was never damaged the graffiti should be none of my business. Wrong. Graffiti near my home or anywhere in my town or my nation makes me a victim and therefor my business.

Why take up the crusade? Because like so many others I have had enough. It was time to act. Graffiti advocates were advertising, celebrating, extolling, and praising the dark virtues of graffiti writers and their vandalism. This obnoxious activity was exported by OUR country to the rest of the world. We were now making it worse, and to pour salt in the wound the MAJOR supporter of criminal art was a web site at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This site was and still is shameful.

My neighborhood was surrounded by white supremacist gang graffiti done by young bored ignorant white adults from neighboring cities. These punks, have been tagging property belonging to my homes association and, the public property surrounding it, for over two years. Despite one of their number being arrested, their hooliganism continues. My property value and the safety of our neighborhood is threatened. My neighbors and I had to act to protect our neighborhood. A community effort almost unprecedented in our area mobilized neighbors that have been volunteering to clean graffiti for as many years as the graffiti has appeared. None of us is willing to let the taggers have our town!

Contrary to the drivel the Art Crimes web site feeds a gullible public, much of the graffiti in communities today is in fact gang related graffiti. What I say in my FAQ is that the people who do graffiti have various motivations and those motivations vary from area to area. In a nearby town the white supremacist graffiti has given way to gang graffiti from the Nortenos and Sorenos. The notorious X13 and X14 Latino juvenile gangs that wear red and blue to identify their own brand of hatred and fear. These Latino gangs shoot at each other. They prey on their own people and their communities. There has been one gang killing in the neighboring city so far and lots of gang related graffiti in my town scrawled on walls by the same young people. There hasn't been one pretty picture vandal of the kind Art Crimes supports in this area in my memory. Within two weeks of a new sound wall going up in a newly refurbished area near my home, vandals covered a 200 foot section with red paint. We were all victims on that day.

There are people like me in every community. People have had enough of senseless vandalism. They want it to stop. I want it to stop. When I saw the moronic madness that is Art Crimes giving birth to other graffiti advocate sites something said to me - fight back. The Georgia Institute of Technology does not have the right to perpetuate, glorify, and sanctify crime. I have every right to disagree, and to point out how graffiti advocate web sites perpetuate the tragedy of graffiti by celebrating it. These web sites are engaging our children in a very negative way.

Yes I was a victim. My family and my community fell victim to the tragedy of graffiti. We face new tags every weekend and many of us are on the streets every weekend cleaning it up. We make a public statement through abatement that graffiti vandalism is vile behavior that will not be tolerated. Our local police will arrest and prosecute vandals. Our citizens report graffiti to the police and the police investigate. Our cities and will take advantage of new civil statutes that permit us to sue the vandals or their parents to recover damages. Our community intends to hold the vandals accountable.

My friend Mike Scanes of the U.K. explained to me quite succinctly what his views were on this question and I agree with him: "Graffiti is the thin edge of environmental impoverishment. My experience has been unattended graffiti leads to other crimes, like street lights and signs getting vandalized which in turn don't get repaired and hastens to process. I did a five year study of a small shopping centre form the time vandalism started. Within three years half the shops were vacant and boarded up. Much the same happens with subways. As the graffiti increases law abiding people stay away, and I have seen elderly people crossing a busy main road rather than use the vandalized subways."

I have personally seen what graffiti does to the character of neighborhoods from Philadelphia to San Francisco. It isn't pretty. Each time I'm asked a question like, "what does graffiti do to a community" I am astonished. Astonished that the question is not, "how can we end this madness." Governments have created graffiti ordinances to hasten graffiti clean up before the graffiti destroys the community.

Graffiti is done by vandals of every race, sex, ethnic origin, and socioeconomic background. No single group has a monopoly on the crime. Believing that graffiti is a form of social and political expression by oppressed masses is intentional deceit think perpetrated by the graffiti advocates. The kids use this as an excuse to obfuscate the real reasons behind their vandalism. This is just one of many graffiti advocate theories used deceive communities and protect the very few pretty picture vandals.

The vandalism sub-culture thrives on lawlessness and gang-like behavior whether they believe they are in gangs or not. (Read my page http://www.dougweb.com/vandals.html) Vandals derive a major thrill when chased by the police or angry citizens. Vandals challenge communities that cover up the vandalism, by leaving more damage the minute we abatement volunteers remove it. Vandals leave their primitive markings like a dog leaves urine. Any excuse for vandalism is just a reason to hide the truth.

Graffiti vandals are a minuscule number within our population who currently are the proximate cause for the most horrific clean-up expenses faced by cities today. Communities everywhere are being held hostage by terrorists in the larval stage. No, terrorism is not an art form and neither is graffiti. Celebrating graffiti as an art form on the net is irresponsible and maniacal. One has to wonder why, given what damage has already been caused, why anyone in their right mind would celebrate this criminal experience.

You might benefit from viewing graffiti videos. Graffiti advocacy is not only accomplished through the web. This lawless subculture is training future generations through film, video tape, and cult magazines. Parents should be as worried about the trash think available on Art Crimes, graffiti videos, and magazines as they are about obscenity on the net! There's not much difference, particularly if the child feels encouraged to join the subculture!

Vandals do indeed use the net to communicate. They follow the tags seen on trains from city to city. They talk about the tags and throw ups they see in their travels. Certain high-profile vandals gain international notoriety and fame simply because the vandalism sub-culture can get the word out. There is a PHD at a mid-Western University that encourages students to read about graffiti on the net. Reading graffiti advocate lies is part of the course! I worry about kids being influenced by trash on the net. Someone had to do something.

I say on my FAQ page that we cannot and should not attempt to bring down the private sites of graffiti advocates. We can certainly talk about their supreme lack of good judgment and common sense. While the other graffiti advocate sites are as tasteless and vile as Art Crimes, these sites are not blessed by, nor do they have the academic standing offered by an educational institution. It is easier for parents and young people to disregard private sites as worthless trash. Don't you think it is much harder to try and explain to a young person why the Georgia Institute of Technology celebrates vandalism through Art Crimes?

It has been proven over and over again, in community after community, that citizens can make a big difference toward reducing graffiti near their homes. I have seen it first hand. Vandals get the hint after a while and stop painting in areas where we clean it as fast as it appears. Communities and programs that care enough about the kids to keep them away from illegal activity are saving communities all over the nation. There are other things for vandals to do besides remain vandals and victimize others.

The Net will serve as one of many places to tell the truth about the tragedy of graffiti. On the Net we see how the vandals behave themselves by visiting their forums, reading the bulletin boards, and visiting their web sites. Parents can use distasteful sites as examples of unacceptable behavior. Parents can keep an eye on the schools to make sure the schools take education seriously. The Net is now part of a larger graffiti abatement strategy and An Anti-Graffiti Web Page is here for that purpose.

My site makes the vandals feel uncomfortable. Since May 1995 I have received threats against my family and my life. I have received email from children containing profane language you can't repeat. The reaction to my site by the graffiti advocates has been as expected. Most are afraid of going to jail so they don't want the world to know the truth. The react loudly, irrationally, and with without thinking. Many make utter fools of themselves. I think they especially fear the truth. When they realize their parents may find the site that gets them concerned. Vandals don't want consequences. Vandals work in the darkness as all cowards do,

I can tell you what the Net will not be as long as I can write. The net will not be a place where graffiti advocacy goes unchallenged. Vandals will not roam the net freely to deceive others. Other Anti-Graffiti sites have sprung up. Neighborhoods, police departments, departments of public works, all have anti-graffiti web sites. The anti-graffiti sites are a force for the vandals to reckon with. Our very presence makes vandals uncomfortable because we remind them that crime has consequences. Stupid illogical behavior has consequences. Art Crimes free reign over the net ended in May 1995 when my site went up. If my site went down tomorrow the new abatement sites would remain to tell the truth about the tragedy of graffiti. Victimizing your neighbor is not cool Adam.

Here is some recent information from an abatement volunteer in the Los Angeles area who wrote to me about the famous early experiments in Huntington Beach, CA. This is common knowledge in Huntington Beach. These same abandoned experiments are now called censorship by left leaning individuals looking for a way to do some convenient government bashing:

"When Huntington Beach tried out using sea walls at the beach for "approved graffiti zones," they soon had businesses and residents complaining because of the near-area vandalism the zones brought. Eventually the program was scrapped.

In another Los Angeles community, there is a business that lets kids paint on his building. Sounds great, but once they are done they go hit the freeway walls, signs and medians that are bordering on his business.

Graffiti walls would work if the kids had any respect. But they obviously DON'T have respect, otherwise they wouldn't be doing graffiti."

The Public Works Superintendent of Rockford, Ill. Wrote to me:

I totally agree w/your opinion that community graffiti walls are worthless in halting or diminishing graffiti. We have a huge one in Rockford, sponsored by Rockford Park District, and I see some of the same tags there as I see on people's houses and downtown buildings. As I understand "fame", its constituents are degree of difficulty, quality of design, and number of hits. Community walls only satisfy the quality of design criteria. Remember the young man in California who, on 16 Apr 97 was fined $100,000 (when his parents were already paying $42,000 in restitution); and how about the one in Milwaukee, who, on the same date, was sentenced to 51 months in prison. Can some do-gooder actually believe that either of these taggers could have "gotten it out of their system" if they had a community wall as an outlet?

The other part that is wrong with the community wall concept is that it seemingly fails to consider that graffiti gets on walls because of (1) taggers and (2) street gangs. The latter certainly are not going to be satisfied with community walls; how can they mark territory, intimidate, and recruit with a community wall? I did a quick count of our graffiti in Rockford, and it is 90% street gangs and 10% taggers. If our community wall worked (and, as I said, it does not!), it would only solve 10% of our graffiti problem.

One of my sons has a degree in studio art. During the five years that he was going to college, he was able to satisfy his creative urges with canvas, poster board, sketch pads, etc. Not once did he come to me and ask for a garage door or a brick wall. Not once! (I must have raised the kid right!!).

A MAJOR San Francisco Bay Area City actually contracted with known graffiti vandals to do murals. They did some beautiful work and all legal, but the vandals spoiled it! They tagged public and private property near their murals. They trashed the neighborhood they claimed to have beautified. Adam, you need to research this some more to convince yourself if I have not already done so. I mean research and consider your sources.

There's a whole lot more to the vandalism issue than a graffiti advocate is willing to admit Adam. Where do the kids get their paint? Burglary and petty theft of paint products has prompted many cities and even States like Arizona to enact laws either preventing the sale of aerosol paints to minors or forcing businesses to keep paints behind lock and key away from the customers. So if you give them a wall, you may still have a serious problem with theft.

Last updated December 13, 1997

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