How police can investigate and prosecute taggers

Posted: November 27th, 2018 | Author: GT | Filed under: Press | No Comments »

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How police can investigate and prosecute taggers

Posted: November 26th, 2018 | Author: GT | Filed under: News | No Comments »

As featured in

How police can investigate and prosecute taggers
Cities spend millions of dollars a year combating this problem without getting restitution

Nov 26, 2018

By PoliceOne Staff

From the drawings on temple walls in ancient Egypt to the inscriptions scattered throughout the
Catacombs of Rome, as long as there have been humans, there has been graffiti.
It’s a problem that police officers need no reminder of – whether rural or urban, big city or small
town, graffiti is a persistent issue plaguing virtually every community in America. In fact, an
estimated $12 billion is spent on cleaning up graffiti per year in the United States, according to
the Department of Justice. Here’s how police can investigate and prosecute the most prolific of
these vandalizers: taggers.

WHY INVESTIGATING AND PROSECUTING GRAFFITI VANDALS MATTERS
From broken windows theory to studies that have tracked the correlation between graffiti and
other crime, there’s no denying the criminal cost of graffiti. But perhaps a more compelling
argument for city officials who need to be convinced of the importance of law enforcement’s role
in combatting graffiti is cost and restitution.

Timothy Kephart, founder and CEO of Graffiti Tracker, a web-based solution that helps identify,
track, prosecute and seek restitution from graffiti vandals, sees the issue in many cities: they’re
attacking the problem by just doing cleanup. But that doesn’t really solve the issue when they’re
not prosecuting the people who are responsible. In the end, they’re spending more money than if
they were actually going after the perpetrators.

RELATED ARTICLES:
Uncover the hidden messages in graffiti
Tracking graffiti one tag at a time

“The cities we work with – they’re spending millions of dollars a year, and when they go and
they catch a kid because they’re tracking it, they have this kid’s chronological history of
vandalism that could be 30, 40, 50 or 60 incidents of graffiti,” Kephart said. “So it’s not like
they’re catching a kid that just did one piece of graffiti and that’s it. They’re usually sending to
court cases where there’s dozens of incidents. So the judge is able to see the severity and the
proliferation of this individual and their vandalism. It’s kind of like if you’re going down the
street and you smash a car window, you’re probably going to get a pretty light sentence. But if
the police were to catch you vandalizing and smashing 50 car windows, the courts are going to
take that a lot more seriously, and it’s the same thing with graffiti.”

TAGGER GRAFFITI VS. GANG GRAFFITI

According to the  U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services,
there are four main types of graffiti: gang, ideological, spontaneous and tagger. Of these four, of
most concern to law enforcement in terms of day-to-day operations is tagger and gang graffiti.

Contrary to popular belief, taggers – not gangs – produce the most graffiti, which can range from
high-volume simple hits to complex street art.

In most cases, taggers come up with a moniker and are driven primarily by tagging that moniker
in as many places as possible, like freeways, bathrooms and construction sites. The more difficult
the spot is to reach, the more impressive the tag. The majority of taggers are young – ranging
from 12 to 18 years old.

“You get some older ones in there, some outliers, but that’s usually the bulk of your taggers,”
Kephart said. “So they don’t really have a high circle of travel; most of their graffiti takes place
in areas close to where they either live or maybe go to school or go to work. Whereas the gang
stuff is pretty much contained within the gang territory.”

Operating mostly late at night or early morning and usually traveling in crews, taggers seek the
notoriety that comes with their vandalism.

“The biggest difference that really comes into play between gang and tagger graffiti is the
motivation,” Kephart said. “The motivation for gang graffiti is spreading fear and intimidation in
the community – to the public, police and other gangs – and that’s why it’s written in a style
where you can easily make out the letters. Whereas tagging graffiti, the motivation is for fame
and notoriety. So the purpose for tagging graffiti is really to get your name out there amongst
your tagger peers.”

Because a tagger’s audience is intended to be others in the subculture, it can be more difficult to
decipher than other forms of graffiti.

TARGETING GRAFFITI THE SMART WAY
Communication is key when it comes to tracking down taggers. In many cities, there is a lack of
coordination and communication between public works and law enforcement, despite both
having an important role in combating graffiti.

“Probably the biggest challenge that city governments face is that you have two completely
separate entities between the law enforcement and the public works folks,” Kephart said. “So law
enforcement, they may hear complaints from the community about the graffiti problem but they
don’t realize the extent of it. And public works, who is in a completely different department and
doesn’t really communicate this information to law enforcement, they may very well be
budgeting half a million to a million dollars a year painting over this problem. But the police
department doesn’t realize how bad that problem is because they don’t see that information.”

Kephart says public works should be utilized by law enforcement for documenting graffiti. Some
police agencies call upon citizens to help, but it’s the graffiti abatement teams that are out there
every day and are going to have the ability to truly capture the scope of the problem.

“You’re never going to have the volume of calls for service equal the volume for what the crews
actually go out and remove,” Kephart said. “They know where the traffic generally is located. So
they’re going out all the time and hitting up those areas where they know there’s always going to
be graffiti and painting over it themselves.”

Cities need a centralized system where all of these agencies targeting graffiti – from public
works to police – can share information. A centralized system to document, decipher and track
these incidents is crucial to successful investigation and prosecution of individual taggers. Of
course, identifying and tracking all these monikers can be time consuming and resource
intensive, which is why services like Graffiti Tracker can help.

“Your best bet is you have your graffiti abatement crews that are already going out there anyway,
have them photograph each incident, upload the incident into our system, we do the analysis so
the police department doesn’t have to spend any resources on that, and then they get all the
benefits where they see who’s doing the most damage, where they’re doing the most damage,
what locations, and how frequently,” Kephart said. “So when they go after the person, he’s no
longer being charged with one or two counts of vandalism, he’s being charged with 40, 50 or 60
counts of vandalism because you can see all this money. And most importantly, that means
agencies and city municipal governments can start getting this money back that they’re spending
now – they can get it back in the form of restitution.”

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Free Online Course | Reducing Graffiti in Your Community

Posted: November 21st, 2018 | Author: GT | Filed under: Press | No Comments »

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Uncover the hidden messages in graffiti

Posted: November 5th, 2018 | Author: GT | Filed under: Press | No Comments »

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Uncover the hidden messages in graffiti

Posted: November 5th, 2018 | Author: GT | Filed under: News | No Comments »

As featured in

Uncover the hidden messages in graffiti
When the crime is the evidence, a web-based tool can help you investigate even after tagging or
gang graffiti is removed or painted over

Nov 5, 2018

By Laura Neitzel, PoliceOne Staff

British graffiti artist and prankster Banksy shocked the art world when his “Girl with Balloon”
self-destructed moments after a patron bought it for $1.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction. What a
wanton act of destruction of something so valuable, some decried.

The irony was not lost on Timothy Kephart, the founder of Graffiti Tracker, a web-based solution
that helps identify, track, prosecute and seek restitution from graffiti vandals. Cleanup of graffiti-
based vandalism costs in excess of $12 billion annually in the U.S., according to a 2015 study by
the paint company Valspar.

Graffiti as a form of self-expression
has been around since the invention of
writing. But while some graffiti artists
have risen to prominence in the art world,
one needs only answer a single question
to distinguish “graffiti art” from “graffiti
vandalism” – did the person creating the
work have Permission from the property
owner? Absent permission, graffiti is a crime.

A guide on graffiti published by the DOJ’s
Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services explains that “rather than
being a senseless destruction of property,
graffiti fulfills certain psychological needs, including providing excitement and action, a sense of control
and an element of risk.” These motivations range from boredom, self-expression, prestige and
fame to defiance of authority, hostility, anger and intimidation.

RELATED ARTICLES:
Graffiti: How to take a nuisance crime, extract evidence and recoup money
Tracking graffiti one tag at a time

Fortunately for law enforcement, the psychological motivations that drive a graffiti vandal to
commit the crime also impel them to leave a trail of clues to their identity, location and
affiliations. Understanding the different motivations of each type of graffiti is critical to
understanding how to combat it.

While graffiti artists like Banksy make headlines, graffiti as artistic expression represents only a
tiny percentage of graffiti worldwide. The two most prevalent categories of graffiti vandalism are
gang graffiti and tagging graffiti.
 
There are two very different motivations behind the two, says Kephart, and each motivation can
be used to go investigate and reduce the problem.

GANG GRAFFITI
The motivation behind the gang graffiti is fear and intimidation, he adds.

“They’re trying to put as much fear and intimidation to the community, to law enforcement and
to other rival gangs,” he said.

Recognizable by its block letters and general lack of artistic flourish, gang graffiti exists
primarily as a communication tool. Gang graffiti can mark the boundaries of the gang’s claimed
jurisdiction or “turf,” be used to taunt or threaten other gangs or individuals, boast of
achievements and send coded business communications, such as the time and place of drug
transactions.

Roll call graffiti is a listing of the monikers of two or more members of the same gang, along
with the gang name or symbol. Paying attention to the monikers that appear together gives law
enforcement clues about the identities of gang members and their cliques.

“You get an idea of which gang members are friends that hang out and spend time with one
another,” said Kephart. “So, if one of them gets involved in a shooting and there was another
person with them, it might help narrow down the list of suspects because these two have put their
graffiti up 10 or 15 times over the last month.”

Monikers can also indicate to police when there is an escalation of violence. An X crossing out a
moniker means that gang member is targeted for murder or an attack. Wings on a moniker are a
tribute to a slain gang member and may be a clue to law enforcement that rival gangs will be
seeking revenge.

TAGGING GRAFFITI
Tagging graffiti represents about 80 percent of all graffiti worldwide. The motivation behind
tagging graffiti – often more stylized and colorful – is for fame and notoriety. The more difficult
the location of the tag, the more notoriety for the tagger.

“Some kid – let’s say your average 13, 14-year-old kid that does this, he adopts a nickname,” said
Kephart. “Say it’s Lungs. He’s going to go and write Lungs everywhere. He’s going to be known
by it. His friends are going to call him Lungs. His social media accounts are going to reference
the name Lungs. That’s become his new identity, so he’s going to put that in as many locations as
possible and brag about it.”

Because recognition is important, the tagger tends to express the same motif – the graffiti’s style
and content are replicated over and over again, becoming the tagger’s unique signature. As the
tagger builds his portfolio, law enforcement gains more evidence.

THE IMPORTANCE OF RESTITUTION
Graffiti vandalism is a unique crime in that the very motivations for self-expression, notoriety
and fame that lead graffiti artists and vandals to create graffiti are also weaknesses that can be
exploited by law enforcement to identify, apprehend and bring them to justice. In essence, it’s the
only crime where the evidence is the crime and the crime is the evidence.

Depriving gang members and taggers of the visibility of their graffiti – and thus their notoriety –
has been shown to be effective in reducing graffiti incidents. That’s why most communities
follow a policy of painting over or removing graffiti as soon as possible after the incident is
reported.

Unfortunately, in their haste to remove the graffiti, many communities are inadvertently
destroying evidence that can help law enforcement build a case.

With Graffiti Tracker, police can within moments easily record photographic evidence of the
graffiti, noting its location and other details that can provide crucial information about the
tagger’s identity and tie them to other graffiti incidents. The information then goes into Graffiti
Tracker’s web-based system, where it is analyzed for hidden messages that might tip off police to

an escalation of gang violence, for instance.
Graffiti Tracker also records evidence that allows law enforcement to track activity, trace it to a
specific tagger and build a case for prosecution that can result in arrest and restitution. Not only
does this benefit the community by reimbursing some of the costs of graffiti abatement, the
intervention can keep a young graffiti vandal from a life of crime.

“What better way to identify them than such a low-level crime where you can get the restitution
back and impact the child at a young age to hopefully steer them on the right path,” said Kephart,
who has personally steered several young vandals toward a more productive future. “The kid
also stops putting the graffiti up that can be used to prosecute him and gain restitution or, even
better, prevent him from joining a gang or furthering a criminal career. It’s a win-win in every
single way.”

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