Photo by of Alan Ket by Xolo Maridueña, courtesy www.supportket.org
Law enforcement agencies, judges and politicians around the country are stepping up their battle against graffiti artists. But the crackdown may only have emboldened them.
In March 2009, a man identified by Pittsburgh Police as “HERT,” the city’s second most-wanted graffiti artist, entered the Allegheny County Courthouse for an appearance stemming from a prior arrest.
But when he arrived, he was informed that police also had warrants for his arrest on 69 misdemeanors and four felony counts of criminal mischief based on estimated damages from vandalism caused by the 22-year-old’s alleged activities of spray-painting his tag on public and private buildings, railroad properties, and nearly a dozen neighborhoods in and around Pittsburgh’s downtown corridor. HERT was then handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom.
TV cameras were there to capture the moment, and Detective Daniel Sullivan of Pittsburgh Police Bureau’s Graffiti Task Force, made sure the media knew the significance of the arrest.
“He was the number-two tagger in the city, hitting more than 100 pieces of property, and that doesn’t include outside boroughs,” Sullivan told reporters, adding that HERT had caused an estimated $212,000 in damages to private and public property during his graffiti career.
The case of HERT, who is still awaiting trial, illustrates what some observers believe is an increasing crackdown on graffiti across the country. While, nationwide statistics on graffiti crime do not exist, the reallocation of police department budgets and resources suggests that cities are increasingly using prosecutions as a weapon to end the practice. For example, Graffiti Tracker, an Omaha, Nebraska-based company, which investigates graffiti crimes under contract with law enforcement agencies or sells them analysis software, is doing a thriving business. According to Timothy Kephart, Graffiti Tracker’s CEO, the company has over $1 million in contracts with police departments in 45 cities, towns and municipalities.
And more cities like Pittsburgh have created “vandal squads” dedicated to capturing high-profile graffiti artists, similar to the force New York City instituted decades ago.
But the subtext of this battle is cultural.
Street Art
Graffiti artists and their defenders claim that what they do is not just art, but the manifestation of a rich, decades-old street culture. To opponents of course, it is simply vandalism, punishable by an escalating level of fines, jail time or community service. The fines can vary, depending on whether it is prosecuted as a misdemeanor or felony—which in turns depends on where the case is being tried. In Pittsburgh, for example, damages exceeding $5,000 are considered a felony, while in New York, only damages less than $1,500 are prosecuted as misdemeanors.
The wide variations in punishment, as well as the different methods used to calculate damages and collect evidence may be one reason that consistent statistics are hard to come by. Yet one thing appears certain: graffiti artists are not only unfazed by the forces arrayed against them; they seem to be energized.
“By our measures, (including) input from local and out-of-state police departments, graffiti crime is increasing at a significant rate,” admits Det. Sullivan, who says that enforcement has been complicated by the commercialization of the graffiti subculture and arguments that graffiti is a legitimate part of popular culture.
“So many different types of people are involved in the world of graffiti,” says Stacey Richman, a New York-based lawyer who has represented countless graffiti artists, such as members of the TATS CRU, a group of Bronx (NY)-based artists who style themselves as “professional muralists who work in aerosol” and even have their own web site. “It is a very complex community, and historically graffiti serves a very important communicative message amongst people.”
According to Richman, graffiti has often kept neighborhood youth away from drugs and gangs and focused, instead, on creativity. “It’s a positive outlet as compared to other options in the street for young people,” she says.
Victimless Crime?
Taggers are often quick to claim, in their defense, that graffiti is a victimless crime. But Lester G. Nauhaus, a judge in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County known for being tough on graffiti, disagrees strongly. “There are always victims,” he argues. “The victims in these situations own the property.”
Nevertheless, the argument that property owners are victims remains a contentious one in graffiti culture, primarily because it sets up what many view as a direct confrontation between the haves and have-nots in society.
“Wealthy building owners think that having something on the wall hurts their property values and makes people fearful,” says Manhattan graffiti artist Alain Maridueña, who uses the tag KET. “(But) young people think that writing on the wall is a form of expression; it’s artistic, and it’s beautiful.”
Opponents are equally determined to put a stop to what they consider a threat to the quality of life in their communities. “Graffiti really cuts at the soul of a neighborhood,” says Jenny Skrinjar, president of Lawrenceville United, a Pittsburgh-based community group. “A neighborhood can’t tolerate the trash and uncaring appeal that [graffiti] brings.”
Whatever the merits of the conflicting arguments, graffiti artists are well aware that, once they are caught, they face a mounting sea of legal troubles. In 2006, a Special Investigations Unit of the New York Police Department searched Maridueña’s home. Police seized documents, computers, art supplies, and even historical photos that he was keeping for an upcoming book on the history of New York City’s graffiti movement.
He pled guilty to the felony charges against him to avoid a prison sentence. As a father, he didn’t want to lose any time with his children. He has over a year left on his court-ordered probation and will soon finish paying his restitution. Most damaging of all, however: he is now a convicted felon.
“It’s a money game,” charges Maridueña. “They wear you down until you run out of money. And then you got to take a shitty deal and do prison time or get a permanent record. And then you become a criminal by their standards, and they can immediately toss you in jail if you ever get out of line.”
Hardening Stance
Recent convictions nationwide have shown a hardening of the criminal justice system’s stance against graffiti artists. In December, Corpus Christi (Texas) Judge Marisela Saldaña sentenced 18-year-old Sebastian Perez to eight years in prison on three counts of graffiti and one count of marijuana possession, giving Perez the maximum two-year sentence for each charge. Under Texas law, both crimes are felonies. But due to a new state law prohibiting judges to “stack” consecutive sentences, Perez’ sentence was reduced to two years.
Danielle Bremner, aka UTAH, has been arrested and sentenced multiple times in the past two years. In April 2009, Bremner was sentenced to six months at New York’s Rikers Island facility and ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution to the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. After her release from Rikers, she served another six months in a Boston prison for similar offenses and was released in January.
The most notable case in recent years, however, is the July 2008 conviction of Daniel Montano (aka MF ONE), the graffitist sentenced to 2 ½ to 5 years in a Pennsylvania state penitentiary. The Pittsburgh Police Bureau’s Graffiti Task Force estimated Montano caused over $700,000 in damages to private and public property. And when Montano is released from prison, he will owe $234,000 in restitution and be expected to fulfill 2,500 hours of community service.
But not everyone believes prison sentences are the answer to this problem.
“Locking up graffiti writers costs taxpayer money and doesn’t remove the graffiti that bothered people to begin with,” says Caleb Neelon, co-author of the forthcoming book A History of American Graffiti (HarperCollins). “The sensation of vengeance may feel good to some, but it’s an expensive rush.”
Neelon raises an important point. Property damage caused by graffiti writers is often overshadowed by the cost of incarceration.
However, Pittsburgh Judge Nauhaus argues that the cost is defensible when dealing with repeat offenders. “Having a vandal perform community service is just punishment for the first or second offense,” says Nauhaus. “But when he says ‘screw you’ to society, I (have) no sympathy. We live in a structured society. And if somebody doesn’t want to be part of the structured society, you take them out.”
For graffiti artists across the country, and their defenders, that doesn’t sound encouraging.
“People fail to realize that the person [they read about] in the paper is an individual and cannot be held responsible for all the graffiti in the city,” says a graffiti artist from a major metropolitan area who spoke with TCR on condition that his name not be used, citing the landslide of public outrage that often follows the arrest of a prolific tagger. “It’s not jail that worries me, it’s being convicted of a felony and having that limit my future, especially for something as insignificant as applying paint to walls without permission.”
Matthew Newton is an independent journalist. He is a regular guest columnist for the Applied Research Center’s RaceWire blog and a contributing editor at True/Slant.com, where he writes the column Annals of Americus.
Photo by of Alan Ket by Xolo Maridueña, courtesy www.supportket.org
The Real World of Prison, Crime and Justice
“A Story That Needs To Be Told”
By Author – John J. Pecchio
This article will inform the mind and startle the soul. You will read how crime and punishment in this country is out of control.
My books “Hell Behind Prison Walls” and “The Devil’s Den of Prison and Justice” are true compelling and gripping stories taken from my personal thoughts and experiences of working in a prison system for almost three-decades.
My Website http://www.johnpecchio.com is a good informational tool on prisons and justice. You can click on my miscellaneous icon that will take you into my books, newspaper articles and guestbook entries on what people say about my regional best-selling books, and our justice system.
Do not overlook the audio video commercial to the rights of my Website that will show the type of criminals I worked with and how they act and look in today’s prisons…
If you are interested in scheduling this author for a Book Signings, Personal Interviews and Prison Presentations, my e-mail address and phone numbers is also, available on my Website. http://www.johnpecchio.com
When prisons were in command prisoners could look forward to being productive in life.
But after several decades of prison bureaucrats experimenting with new reform methods they ended up taking a well run prison system and turned it into a Nightmare of Hell and a Playground for Criminal’s Rights.
There is no prison reform methods left that will cure the lack of administrative and prisoner discipline, or stop how prisons have become so contaminated with flaws, imbedded with unthinking unknowing or corrupted officials and political bureaucrats?
it send chills up and down your spine, when you are forced to move daily between freedom and captivity while walking a delicate line between administrative politics and the threat of inmate violence.
The lockup system in these new high-tech all solitary confinement prisons, have turned most convicts into psychopathic monsters, acting like prehistoric man existing all over again…
My prison career was coming to an end and I was looking forward to my retirement when what I always expected would happen did happen. One morning in my shop, without security present, I was brutally attacked by a serial killer serving two life terms for several senseless killings. He showed no remorse in society nor did he in prison. He should have received the death penalty, but lawmakers and prison officials choose to protect this criminal’s rights at taxpayers’ expense…
Gang wars are taking over our society like butter melting over a hot stove. Approximately eighty-percent of thugs and gangsters control prison compounds and are career criminals, which come from the ghettos of our society.
Eventually, the old gang members from the streets will be incarcerated for new crimes, and meet up with old gang members already imprisoned. Together they will bond once again, to continue dealing in contraband and committing more crimes in prisons.
Taxpayers are living in hard times to support their families and keep their jobs. But this merry-go-round of political justice to protect criminal’s rights while they keep violated the rights of other is un-constitutional…
In today’s society we have too many repeat-felons being released from prisons without being fully disciplined or rehabilitated. That is why repeat felons along with illegal-immigrants are committing most of the crimes in the United States.
Lawmakers for years cannot locate approximately twelve-million illegal immigrants crossing the borders into this country. The new programs they are offering is to trick illegal immigrant out of hiding, by providing full amnesty, and give them entry permit into this country, along with healthcare benefits, at taxpayers’ expense. This is not going to help reduce the deficit and crime rates in this country.
Federal Lawmakers recognize that prison spending is out of control. They keep pressuring the local government and prison officials, to set up a program that will reduce prison overcrowding and release thousands of criminals that have not completed their sentences or been fully reformed.
For example, in California they have approximately 33-prisons that are filled with about 153-thousand criminals, and most of them are murderers, rapist, pedophiles, and drug-pushers and mentally unstable inmates living off the taxpayers.
But why are lawmakers demanding that 55-thousand criminals from the California Correctional Facilities, be released within 3-years. When most of them are career criminals and will return back to prisons committing the same crimes?
Taxpayers’ will be paying over $5,000 dollars a years to keep one-criminal on parole. Not to mention, the cost of law-enforcement officers putting their lives on the line again, chasing down the same felon(s) to be put back through our Judicial System at taxpayers’ expense.
The present California Governor is now trying to make lawmakers reconsider their options of releasing prisoners because of the recidivism rate, which is more then seventy-nine percent returning in one to three-years.
The three major problems that criminals have when incarcerated is to get revenge, continue dealing in contraband and demoralize and attack correctional officers because they remind them of the police officers on the streets.
Prison Officials; know that repeat felons get more violent and evil-minded because they are surrounded, daily, by the same type of criminals they have become.
You cannot reform criminals without re-socializing them first. And that’s why rehabilitation and prison reform have become just words to keep the taxpayer’s money flowing into these institutions.
In Mexico, the crime rates are high, and that breeds a lot of corruption in their society, including law-enforcement officials. They now have the highest kidnapping rate in the world. When these Mexicans and millions of other illegal immigrants keep pouring over the boarders into our county, crime rates keep increasing. Phoenix Arizona now has the second highest kidnapping rate in the world.
The federal panel of lawmakers within our government has created a stimulus package to help the American taxpayers that are out of work and many have to foreclose on their homes.
The sad situation within our government, is how they are taking chances with taxpayers’ money to create stimulus packages, while supporting the highest deficit in the history of this country?
How can our children and grandchildren that will be paying for all this, and continue to pay for government experiments and their political adventures without jobs?
Prison spending is out of control. And the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
When I hear how local governors, of each state, keeps on playing politics with the federal government in hopes they can reduce prison spending by reducing prison population, closing prisons, and reducing prison staff. This type of thinking is hypercritical and appalling to the security of prisons and society.
Hello out there my fellow American, don’t walk to the employment office run, before some lawmakers pass a new law to allow illegal immigrants to collect unemployment…
Prison officials cannot afford or keep releasing dangerous prisoners frivolously. Our criminal justice system was developed by lawmakers to pass laws to put these criminals behind bars and keep society safe.
You can now read how federal and state prisons have deteriorated to their worst condition in the history of these institutions. They have changed from being run with dignity and strong security into a hellish nightmare where corruption is the norm.
With the loss of positive leadership in our prisons came the increase of prisoner’s power, primarily caused by their ability to hide behind highly-defended “Civil Rights”, which has now taken precedence above all else. These rights allowed them to live without fear of strong retribution for their actions, thereby leading to a breakdown in inmate behavior and resulting in riots, fights, and physical and verbal abuse of prison workers.
Sincerely
John J. Pecchio, Author
FREE HERT
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by indiefshionnews: Art Crime: Graffiti Wars http://bit.ly/czFZzv...
[...] an article titled “Art Crime: Graffiti Wars” that went live this morning over at The Crime Report, I take a look at this crackdown, examining it [...]
[...] an article titled “Art Crime: Graffiti Wars” that went live this morning over at The Crime Report, I take a look at this crackdown, [...]
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Hahahaha WE ARE WINNING against you haters ahaha… SUPPORT graffiti art! Art is not a crime! We will never stop painting. Any crackdown will only make us bolder… TRUE! Dumb art hater opponents fight hard, we fight HARDER.
!
Please refer to the perpetrators of this crime as Graffiti Vandals, not artist. They are steeling from property owners and giving nothing in return.
[...] “Law enforcement agencies, judges and politicians around the country are stepping up their bat… Read the whole thing here, including interview with Ket and Caleb Neelon! [...]
This is an incredibly complex issue and raises the blood pressure of many. The challenge facing law enforcers and society around graffiti and many other crimes is deciding whether the best strategy is to focus on prevention or punishment. The two require totally different strategies and have very different outcomes.
With regards to graffiti, we’ve spent 35 years with the main focus being on punishment and it simply hasn’t worked. There is more graffiti now than ever before, despite the penalties massively increasing and some serious jail time being handed out in some cases.
When public policy only focuses on punishment as a deterrent it doesn’t appear to work and as the last three and a half decades of doing the same thing has shown, it can simply reposition the crime so it takes on a much more agressive attitude.
I am not saying graffiti writers should be allowed to run free and trash the streets, however, it is time to take a smarter approach to examine what would actually make up a prevention strategy rather than focusing on how we punish people once they’ve already done graffiti.
Pittsburgh is absolutely terrible in the way they fight graffiti. They only bother to cover stuff in high profile areas (like where the jail trail is next to the hot metal bridge) and they do it with ugly blocks of paint that often contrast with the last cover up they used. Plus in verona they seem to have removed all the good stuff because all I found was drippy throw ups and some random tags, +1 very old piece that they seem to have missed.
[...] — whether it’s writing about PTSD in vets from Afghanistan/Iraq, sampling in hip-hop, the prosecution of graffiti artists, etc. I want what I write about to matter, at least to some small extent. And focusing too long on [...]
Much much LOVE to my fellow artist behind bars across the world. Keep your heads up and stay strong. They can buff your artwork and take away your freedom. But they can’t take away your creativity and motivation. We can fight back with UNITY and MONEY, and most important KNOWLAGE! Graffiti will NEVER stop. So let’s get organized.
UNITE !!!!!!!!!!!