Declaring war on graffiti

Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006 | 6:56 a.m.

Anti-graffiti activists in Clark County are waging their spray paint war online, trying to hit taggers where it really hurts: MySpace.

Starting Friday, users of the social networking Web site will begin to see a pop-up advertisement appear on their computer screens, promising a reward of up to $500 for anyone who can tip off the police to taggers.

The ad is programed to "pop up" on random Clark County computer screens 3.5 million times throughout December, with a specific emphasis on MySpace users aged 14-25, some of whom will be home for holiday break and, presumably, online.

The Southern Nevada Graffiti Coalition, composed of law enforcement, government agencies and business groups, collected $9,500 from the Greater Las Vegas Associations of Realtors and Clark County to pay for the advertisement.

The pop-up ad is only part of the online presence the coalition is creating to promote its Turn-In-A-Tagger program, which was announced Nov. 15 and offers tipsters money for information leading to the arrest of a tagger.

The next day, the coalition posted a profile on MySpace . The profile page (www.myspace.com/targetingareagraffiti) is a bright yellow with red fonts and encourages viewers to "turn in a tagger and make money!" In the first two weeks the profile was posted, police received 31 tips that led to 18 arrests over an estimated $46,000 in graffiti damage.

The coalition also posted a handful of filmed public service announcements promoting the Turn-In-A-Tagger program on both MySpace and YouTube, a popular Web site for viewing Internet videos. One of the coalition's videos has been viewed online more than 1,500 times, according to Web site tallies.

By advertising online, the coalition hopes to reach teenage informants as well as teenage taggers, who have taken to boasting online about their illegal art.

"MySpace has been a place for graffiti vandals to communicate and sort of glamorize or glorify their craft of breaking the law," said Russell Davis, chairman of the coalition. "The whole idea behind going onto MySpace is taking the fight to their turf."

For teenagers, the online world is just an extension of the everyday, MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said. The Web site has joined forces with law enforcement agencies across the country who use MySpace as a means of tapping into teenagers, both online and off.

"A typical teen will transition from the physical world to the online world in a seamless fashion and never realize they transitioned," he said. "It's a natural and innate thing for them."

On MySpace it's also natural for teenagers to post comments on different users' profiles, and so far, the coalition's profile has garnered its fair share of critical commentary. One MySpace user commented, "I promote destruction of property. Art isn't dead," while another wrote, "u cant stop it when u erase it u just give us blank canvas." Most comments, however, were too foul to repeat.

And it may not be wise to post profane or threatening comments on a police-run MySpace profile, Metro's Gang Crimes Bureau Capt. Al Salinas said. Posters boasting that police won't catch them are drawing suspicion on themselves as taggers.

Graffiti investigations take considerable footwork in the field, but once police identify the tagger, they are often able to file multiple charges against him, Salinas said.

"Any tagger, the truth of the matter is, who tags a wall with their moniker is essentially tagging the wall with their signature," he said. "Every single time they hit a wall, that's one more count against them."

Graffiti goes hand in hand with gang activity, Salinas said, and tipsters who visit the coalition's MySpace profile are prompted to call Crime Stoppers and provide police with any information they have about what "crew" with whom the tagger might be affiliated .

"Money is big, money will get these people to call in," Salinas said. "They've gotten tired of strangers coming into their neighborhoods and tagging. It's not art, it's not something that we can sit by and allow to continue."

Tipsters can remain anonymous, identified to police by only an ID number. Should the information lead to an arrest, the tipster will be directed to a secret, safe location and paid in cash, said Metro Detective Mike Heart, Crime Stopper's director.

Clark County officials estimate that home and business owners spend $30 million annually on graffiti removal. The county alone spends $3 million a year cleaning up government property, and has several employees dedicated to graffiti removal, said Joe Boteilho, its chief of Code Enforcement.

County cleanup crews are starting to see reduction in the work of more prolific taggers, thanks to tipsters, Boteilho said.

"It's not just doing the graffiti removal, but finding out who these offenders are," Boteilho said. "I think we've really declared war."