Posted: November 21st, 2019 |
Author: GT |
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How a California town reduced youth vandalism and recaptured costs
Reducing abatement costs, recouping funds, and diverting youth from criminal activity go from goals to realities
Nov 21, 2019
By Josh Ogle for PoliceOne BrandFocus
A teenager on their morning walk to school stops to wait at a crosswalk. They pull a black permanent marker from their pocket, and with a few flourishes, a tag takes shape on the nearby electrical box. The crosswalk signal changes and the tagger is gone from the scene of the crime. What cost the tagger a few seconds to achieve has set in motion a process that will cost their city in both money and man-hours. How much it will cost, and whether it will recoup that cost is up to the city.
Located along the 78 Freeway in the San Diego North County area of California, Escondido is a mid-sized city of approximately 155,000 people. Just like all urban areas, Escondido faces its fair share of criminal activity. Dealing with everything from auto theft to various gang-related activities, Escondido must be judicious in how it allocates the time of its roughly 150 sworn officers, and graffiti is not always a high priority. Graffiti Tracker has provided a solution that saves the city time and money, with the side benefit of offering a lesson to its wayward youth.
FINDING TIME
With Graffiti Tracker, an Escondido Public Works Division worker simply uses the app to photograph graffiti, and it is automatically uploaded to Graffiti Tracker. There is no need for an officer to report to the scene to photograph the graffiti, sit down, and review and analyze the photographs, which saves not only officers’ time but also the city’s money. Once an image is uploaded to the app, photos of graffiti are reviewed by Graffiti Tracker analysts for critical pieces of evidence within 24 hours of submission.
Additionally, Graffiti Tracker enables Escondido officers to tie all the damage done by a tagger back to them once they have been captured. One particularly active gang-affiliated tagger, operating under the tagger moniker “Betoe,” caused approximately $20,000 worth of damage to Escondido businesses and properties over seven months. When the offender was finally apprehended, officers only needed a few minutes to pull up relevant information, including photographs, of all the tagging Betoe had done throughout the city of Escondido. Without Graffiti Tracker, the process of retrieving all the information would have taken days of searching through files and photographs.
FINDING MONEY
Besides gaining efficiencies by saving officers’ time, Graffiti Tracker has also allowed Escondido to begin to recoup some of the costs of graffiti abatement. Before the city’s implementation of Graffiti Tracker, court-ordered restitution to Escondido businesses was roughly $22,000 per year. However, in just one year of using Graffiti Tracker, court-ordered restitution amounts to Escondido businesses jumped to more than $185,000.
While offenders’ ability to pay restitution may vary drastically, according to the Public Works Division of Escondido, from July 2018 to February 2019, the city collected over $5,100 in restitution. While this sum recovered in restitution may not be a huge dollar amount, the deterrent effect of word spreading among youths that tagging has major, tangible costs and consequences was of substantial value.
FINDING RESULTS
Escondido has also found further successes with its juvenile diversion program by coupling it with the use of Graffiti Tracker. According to Detective Bill Havens of the Escondido Police Department, most of the taggers the city deals with are juvenile offenders. In most instances, taggers are youths that will attempt to place their monikers in as many places as possible, seeking notoriety and respect among other tagger crews. While this is true of most taggers the city deals with, there also exists a darker, gang-related side of graffiti.
Graffiti Tracker allows Escondido Police to differentiate between juveniles just getting started in tagging and established ones tied to gangs. In doing so, officers are capable of identifying minors that may benefit from the department’s juvenile diversion program. According to Havens, if Graffiti Tracker shows a juvenile tagger is responsible for “larger [graffiti pieces] or a lot of the gang graffiti, especially if the kid isn’t . . . remorseful, we just send that down to the district attorney’s office for prosecution.” On the other hand, if Graffiti Tracker shows a juvenile only has a few minor incidents that are not tied to gangs, Havens says, “diversion can steer them in the right direction and then we don’t see them again.”
Aggressive approaches to abatement coupled with Graffiti Tracker have allowed Escondido to curtail its graffiti problem substantially. If the walls in Escondido could talk, they would no longer speak of taggers and gang activity, but a city where citizens and their property are well protected.
Posted: July 19th, 2019 |
Author: GT |
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How one community reduced crime using graffiti analysis
An integrated strategy includes cleaning up graffiti, prosecuting vandals, working with the community and decoding threats
Jul 19, 2019
By Laura Neitzel, PoliceOne BrandFocus Staff
During the heyday of L.A.’s gang wars in the late ’90s, crime spilled into the tidy, working-class neighborhoods of this small city in Los Angeles County.
Today, some 20 years later, community leaders and residents are able to concern themselves less with crime and more with quality-of-life issues, like the famously congested SoCal traffic.
That’s thanks in part to a concerted effort by officials of Paramount’s public safety department to address some of the underlying factors that affect crime rates and to implement strategies to nip lower-level crimes in the bud before they become bigger problems.
One of those gateway crimes is graffiti vandalism. A commonly held theory in criminal justice and policing suggests that visible signs of vandalism, such as broken windows or graffiti, encourage further crime and disorder, whereas an environment that is visibly cared for sends the signal that crime is not tolerated.
“If you have graffiti, you’re not going to attract the hardworking individuals that are going to give to your economy,” said Adriana Lopez, Paramount’s public safety director. “These are the people who want to buy their first home and make sure that their kids are doing well in school. They see graffiti as related to crime.”
In 2009, Paramount recorded an average of about 15,000 graffiti incidents per year, says Anthony Martinez, a management analyst for Paramount’s public safety department. This got the attention of city officials, who began to look for a solution that would help them curtail the problem. They chose to implement Graffiti Tracker, a comprehensive, web-based system that helps police and public works departments document instances of graffiti and upload photos for permanent storage and review by highly-trained staff who analyze and report on any gang information or tagging monikers that can be useful in thwarting violence or apprehending and prosecuting suspects.
“Graffiti Tracker provided that investigative tool that allowed us to identify, prosecute and seek restitution from our most active vandals, whether taggers or documented gang members,” said Martinez. “Some of our deputies that are assigned to address these quality-of-life issues gained the information they needed to start putting cases against them for them for felony vandalism.”
Between 2015 and 2018, Paramount achieved some impressive statistics in their war against crime:
- A 68% reduction in graffiti incidents.
- A 93% 10-year decrease in gang-related crimes.
- A 63% yearly decrease in gang-related crimes.
Here are four tips from city leaders for getting the most out of Graffiti Tracker to deter crime:
ABATE GRAFFITI QUICKLY
Graffiti Tracker allows law enforcement, city public works department employees and others to take a photo of a graffiti tag and upload the photographic evidence to a data repository for storage and analysis within 24 hours.
Approximately 80% of graffiti activity is “tagging” – the motivation for which is fame and notoriety for the tagger, who is most often a male between the ages of 12 and 17. The tagger will adopt a moniker that he stylizes and spray paints in publicly visible places. The more visible the tag or the more difficult it is to reach, the more the tagger gains in stature, often retagging the same spot repeatedly once cities scrub or repaint.
The speed at which graffiti can be documented and then abated is key for this reason: By abating or painting over the tag as soon as possible, the city denies the tagger the visibility of his moniker and thus the thing he craves most – status among his peers.
“In Paramount, our philosophy and message to the residents is that we remove graffiti within 72 hours,” said Lopez, “and usually within just 24.”
The city also encourages homeowners to use standard paint colors so that when graffiti needs to be abated, it can be done so quickly and in a visual style that’s in keeping with the neighborhood, avoiding the patchwork of different paint colors that signal graffiti lurks underneath.
TRACK AND PROSECUTE VANDALISM
When Paramount started using Graffiti Tracker to track and analyze graffiti, it gave the city the ability to monitor which tags were made by which individual and where they occurred. Once the tagger is identified, he or she can be identified and be held responsible for the damages, including restitution.
“Graffiti is like social media, where the person tells everyone what they do, where they go and who all their friends are,” said Lopez. “Say you have a gang member whose moniker is ‘Puppet.’ Right away, we are able to start tracking Puppet because we know he likes to hang out at this area because that’s where all his graffiti is.”
By knowing where Puppet is likely to appear again, law enforcement can start connecting the dots and potentially catch him committing acts of vandalism or other crimes and start building a case for prosecution.
COLLABORATE WITH THE COMMUNITY
Often, however, restitution may be impossible for a family with few financial resources, and in the case of a minor, the parents may be completely unaware of their child’s behavior. Requiring families to make even a small, monthly amount of restitution can be a regular reminder for the parents to stay involved in their child’s life and a reminder to the tagger that his or her actions have an impact on their loved ones.
“It’s not the fact that we’re getting restitution,” said Martinez. “It’s the fact that a message has been sent out that you will be responsible and we are tracking your activities. We’ll get maybe $75 here, $25 there – nothing significant. But a message has been sent out.”
Regardless of ability to pay, holding taggers accountable when they are teenagers engaged in low-level vandalism may be enough to steer them away from a life of more serious crime.
“Sometimes if it’s just the beginning of this criminal career for this person, it could sway him not to do something,” said Lopez.
Martinez also advocates getting the rest of the community involved. He and Lopez are both active with local schools to help principals and faculty identify at-risk youth and intervene when would-be taggers start with a small moniker in a school bathroom, for instance.
INVESTIGATE GANG ACTIVITY TO PREVENT VIOLENCE
Graffiti Tracker also provides an investigative tool that allows investigators to quickly identify a threat, whether it’s a threat to peace officers or a threat to other gang members.
“We have used Graffiti Tracker countless times to identify active gang members that were involved in violent crimes,” said Martinez, who is often called upon to decode the messages hidden in plain sight in the graffiti.
“For instance, ‘187’ is the California Penal Code for murder,” said Martinez. “It’s typical when one gang puts ‘187’ alongside with the moniker of a rival gang member, or even a law enforcement officer, they are planning murder against that person.”
Graffiti is not merely a nuisance. When a threat is made from one gang to a rival gang through graffiti, the gang is essentially advertising their criminal activity, tipping off law enforcement that there is a looming threat of violence.
“That tells us that in the next week or two, odds are that whoever is responsible for the graffiti is going to show up again, and probably in possession of a firearm, either to commit a murder or for protection,” said Martinez. “Our ability through Graffiti Tracker to remove them through arrest based off the criminal acts of vandalism also assists us in preventing violent crime both for the tagger or gang member, and for the general public who may or may not be victims of a stray bullet.”
Posted: December 13th, 2018 |
Author: GT |
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Spotlight: Graffiti Tracker gives you the first tracking and analysis for graffiti
A comprehensive, web-based system designed to help you identify, track, prosecute and seek restitution from graffiti vandals
Dec 13, 2018
By PoliceOne Staff
1. Where did your company name originate from?
The concept of tracking and analyzing graffiti to extract evidence for law enforcement investigations originated from my research for my master’s thesis on graffiti. Upon finishing my graduate studies I continued to flesh out my theory that graffiti renderings, when properly documented and analyzed, could provide a wealth of evidence desperately needed by local investigative agencies.
2. What was the inspiration behind starting your company?
I graduated with a master’s degree in the summer of 2001. By the summer of 2002 I was working for a local municipality in Los Angeles County where I was applying the theories I had proposed in my master’s thesis. Through this work, what emerged was a web-based solution that agencies could use to rapidly gather, store, and search evidence from graffiti renderings needed for prosecution and restitution recovery.
3. What is your signature product and how does it work?
Graffiti tracking and analysis. Local municipalities photograph graffiti before they abate it using our free mobile app and those photos get sent to us. We analyze each photo and identify the relevant evidence that law enforcement personnel need. This evidence is then cataloged and stored based on GPS and other data points. This information is instantly available to law enforcement personnel to help with their investigations.
4. Why do you believe your products are essential to your vertical (Police, Fire, EMS,
Corrections, Government) community?
Every year there are hundreds of local municipalities that are spending well over a hundred thousand dollars a year just to paint over someone’s criminal activity. These vandals rarely get caught. Graffiti vandalism is a low-level crime that has a high damage cost and when left undeterred these vandals can utterly destroy a community.
5. What has been the biggest challenge your company has faced?
Any time you introduce a new product to government you’re always met with skepticism, which I think is a good thing. Fortunately our product works exactly as advertised and it doesn’t take
long for government officials to realize the benefits.
6. What makes your company unique?
I was the first to create such a tracking and analysis system.
7. What do your customers like best about you and your products?
Our customers love the fact that the tens of thousands of photographs of graffiti are being stored in an easily searchable and user friendly web-based system. They like how quick our customer service is as well. Three a.m. responses to emails are not uncommon.
8. What is the most rewarding part of serving the first responder/local government
community?
I love that we can come into a new community and help them significantly impact their graffiti problem. A lot of times these communities are frustrated. They’ve easily spent half a million dollars over the last year all because some punk kids decided they wanted to put their nickname on someone else’s property. It’s a problem that when left unaddressed never goes away on its own. It destroys neighborhoods and wastes taxpayers’ money but there’s a very easy solution. It’s the only crime I’m aware of where the criminal signs their name.
9. Do you support any charitable organizations within public safety/community? Tell us more.
Yes, but we don’t talk about it. Charity is best done for charity, not publicity.
10. Is there any fun fact of trivia that you’d like to share with our users about you or your company?
Our 877 number has a hidden code within it. So far, nobody has cracked it and I’m guessing it will never happen.
11. What’s next for your company? Any upcoming new projects or initiatives?
Europe! Vandals in Europe should know that their days of freely destroying those beautiful cities and landmarks will soon be coming to an end.
Posted: November 26th, 2018 |
Author: GT |
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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.”
Posted: November 5th, 2018 |
Author: GT |
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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.”
Posted: September 7th, 2018 |
Author: GT |
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Graffiti: How to take a nuisance crime, extract evidence and recoup money
Close analysis can reveal valuable information that your department can use as evidence to seek
prosecution and restitution
Sep 7, 2018
By Laura Neitzel, PoliceOne Staff
When Timothy Kephart was in graduate school and looking for a job in criminal justice, little did
he know that the entry-level crime analyst position he took at the city of Carson, California,
would lead to a lifelong career. His first task was to go out every day and take pictures of the
new graffiti that had appeared overnight.
He had no idea what it all meant, so Kephart
sought help from a gang detective at the L.A.
County Sheriff’s Department, who taught him
how to read the code. After a few months of
gathering daily photos, Kephart noticed
patterns emerging. He realized that graffiti was
a language that could be deciphered to provide
law enforcement with clues to the tagger’s
identity, as well as actionable intelligence
about gang affiliations, rivalries and threats.
“I realized that if law enforcement had this
information, it could help them not only address the graffiti problem on the tagging
side, it also would give the gang intelligence unit information they needed,” Kephart, founder of
Graffiti Tracker, said. “Law enforcement can use the information extracted from the gang graffiti
to track gang membership, prove motive for murder or even prevent a murder.”
RELATED ARTICLES:
Tracking graffiti one tag at a time
RECOGNIZING DIFFERENT KINDS OF GRAFFITI
Using intelligence gained from gang graffiti to halt escalation of gang violence is a worthy goal
in itself. But nationally, gang graffiti represents only 10 percent of all graffiti. Another 5 to 10
percent is generic “Bobby loves Sue”-type graffiti.
The vast majority, 80 percent, is tagging graffiti. That’s where Kephart thinks law enforcement
should be focusing their efforts in order to put a curb on the problem.
The very nature of tagging graffiti – in which the tag is the offender’s personal alias, acronym or
marking – makes tagging vandalism a unique crime in that the perpetrator brazenly leaves clues
to his or her identity and the location of the crime.
“A tagger’s motivation is for fame and notoriety. It’s the only crime that I’m familiar with where
they sign their name,” said Kephart.
Denver Partners Against Graffiti describes tagging vandalism as “like logo placement or brand
advertising. The primary goal of tagging is to advertise the vandal’s ‘tag’ (or street name) and
‘crew’ (tagging group or gang set) and get recognition from others for prominent placement of
tags throughout the city.”
Recognizing that unabated graffiti can lead to a decline in property values and other detriments
to the community, common practice is to paint over graffiti within 24 to 48 hours. Since the
graffiti tagger is looking for recognition, the less time the tag remains visible, the less rewarding
it is for the tagger. Unfortunately, this often just leaves a fresh canvas, inviting a challenge for
another tagger to tag the same spot or for the original tagger to reinforce ownership.
This tag-paint-tag-paint game between police and graffiti vandals can seem like an endless cycle,
leaving many law enforcement agencies to consider tagging graffiti as a low-level, nuisance
crime that is just part of the status quo of any community. Consequently, many agencies and
municipalities without an advanced graffiti reduction strategy resign themselves to routinely
budgeting thousands of dollars for graffiti abatement each year without realizing there is a way
to recoup some of that cost.
ABATEMENT VS. EVIDENCE
By spending money on abatement before extracting evidence, Kephart realized that police were
missing the opportunity to gain restitution from graffiti vandals. So he created Graffiti Tracker,
an actionable, intelligence-based system that helps agencies document tagging graffiti and
preserve evidence that can be used to identify a suspect and build a case. Within minutes, graffiti
evidence can be documented and uploaded to a database for analysis, and abatement can
proceed.
Graffiti Tracker provides its clients access to a free mobile app so any police officer, public
works department worker or even a citizen volunteer can photograph graffiti. The location is
automatically tracked with the photograph and uploaded to a secure, web-based system. Within
24 hours of submission, Graffiti Tracker analysts extract key pieces of evidence that can be used
for investigation. The system builds a database of graffiti by the vandal’s tag or crew and
location in order to connect incidents and create a complete profile of activity by tagger and
crew.
“When we connect that data, we can see that this tagger has appeared with this tagger 15
different times,” said Kephart. “If you catch one tagger, there’s a likelihood he’s going to
lead you to another.”
An advantage of Graffiti Tracker is the experience of its human analysts in decoding gang
graffiti and alerting law enforcement to potential threats.
“If the analysts see that a gang threatens to kill somebody from another gang, they immediately
put that information into a report and send it via email to law enforcement,” said Kephart.
To date, Graffiti Tracker has analyzed over 5 million photographs, helped police identify and
arrest over 4,000 graffiti vandals and helped municipalities recoup over $9 million in restitution.
