PORT ANGELES — City police report a recent uptick in graffiti spray-painted on walls of city and personal property — and not only is it unsightly, but it can be expensive.
Corey Delikat, the city’s parks and recreation director, said his crews have seen more tags on city park signs, in bathrooms and on other city property in past weeks.
“I would say especially the [last] couple of months, it’s definitely increased,” Delikat said.
“It tends to come in waves.”
Delikat said the city has spent about $20,100 repairing vandalism, which includes cleaning graffiti, so far this year and about $72,300 since 2009.
“It seems to us there has been a recent uptick in graffiti around town,” Police Chief Terry Gallagher said Friday.
Among the places hit is the city’s newly installed downtown waterfront esplanade.
That area has been tagged at least twice since it opened to the public in late August, Gallagher said.
“I assure you, we find that as aggravating as citizens [do],” he said.
A bright gold tag also has appeared within the past two weeks on the newly built concrete bridge carrying the Waterfront Trail over Ennis Creek near the former Rayonier mill property, said Craig Fulton, the city’s public works and utilities director.
The bridge, not yet opened to the public, has been built as part of the city’s ongoing combined sewer overflow, or CSO, project.
Fulton said it would be the responsibility of Ferndale-based IMCO General Construction, the lead contractor on the first phase of the CSO project, to clean the graffiti off the bridge.
Deputy Police Chief Brian Smith said police also have seen more graffiti on private buildings, particularly commercial properties.
“This isn’t exclusively by any means public property that’s being marked up,” Smith said.
Depending on the surface, Delikat said, repainting a flat wall marked with graffiti on an average commercial building could run upwards of a couple hundred dollars.
Gallagher said police do not believe the graffiti to be associated with gangs.
“Historically here, we have arrested an individual or two that have gone on these graffiti sprees and have not had any gang involvement,” he said.
“It’s more of a form of entertainment for them that costs the community many thousands of dollars.”
Dallas Maynard, downtown resources officer, has noticed three distinct styles to most of the graffiti in the city.
“I would like to hear from anybody who has knowledge of specific persons who are graffitiing buildings in Port Angeles,” Maynard said.
The designs sometimes will be pictures or symbols and letters, such as initials, likely meaningful to the individual tagger, he said.
Creating graffiti can lead to a charge of malicious mischief, a property crime whose degree would depend on the monetary amount of damage done.
“It is a pain, and it is a very difficult crime to solve without direct evidence or a witness,” Gallagher said.
He added, though, that cases have been made in the past against individuals for multiple instances of graffiti.
He cited one example in which security camera footage of a man buying several cans of spray paint helped connect the man to more than one graffiti tag.
“It’s a struggle to get graffiti treated as more than a single incident,” Gallagher said.
“If we can aggregate the crime, it certainly means consequences are higher for the individuals.”
The best way to deter taggers, Maynard said, is to quickly remove or paint over graffiti as soon as it is noticed.
That way, he said, taggers likely will stop spray-painting those specific areas and move on to less-well-maintained ones once they learn their work is being erased.
“These people want their message out there,” Maynard said.
“They don’t want it covered up with paint.”
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Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
