Gilroy’s Graffiti May Finally be Safe After All!
Last September I wrote an article titled Thank God Gilroy’s Graffiti Is Now Safe From Bandits! It turned out the Gilroy Dispatch headline was misleading and they’d actually arrested a griaffiti practitioner, not a graffiti “bandit” (aka: one who steals). The ‘hero’ of that story was Gilroy Community Service Officer Angela Locke-Paddon whose tireless efforts had led to Gilroy doubling their number of graffiti arrests in 2008.
Well, budget cuts have finally made Gilroy safe for graffiti after all. According to this week’s Gilroy Dispatch-
Just when the Gilroy Police Department was making significant inroads toward controlling Gilroy’s growing graffiti problem, the heart and soul of the anti-graffiti program has been scheduled to be laid off in a recent round of budget cuts.
Community Service Officer Angela Locke-Paddon and Nicole Nielsen, office assistant for the Neighborhood Resource Unit, along with a group of graffiti “Wipe-Out” volunteers were Gilroy’s front against the unsightly scrawls. But after this month, the two women’s part-time duties will be handed off to one of the department’s community service officers.
Take particular notice of the part of the first sentence I emphasized above. According to the police and the newspaper, Gilroy has more graffiti, not less, despite almost doubling the number of arrests. In other words, the current abatement system isn’t working! How about we try something other than more arrests and trials?
As I wrote i nmy previous post, I’m not a fan of tagging (the mostly illegible scrawls that appear all over the place), though I am a fan of spray paint art in public spaces. But my excitement over these lay offs actually has very little to do with graffiti. Rather I’m pleased by the overall savings these layoffs represent. It’s not just the two part time salaries, but also all of the resources that are wasted with every arrest: booking, jailing, court costs, etc.
Should someone be caught vandalizing private property the victim has recourse in civil court. No police resources required. As for public property, aren’t taggers and graffiti artists part of the public? If they want graffiti up they should be free to put it up. If you don’t want it there, you should be free to cover it or remove it. No police resources required.
Tags: CA, Gilroy, gilroy dispatch, Gilroy Police Department, graffiti, graffiti art, Police, public spaces
