Graffiti Report - The UNTAG Program
(Uniting Neighborhoods To Abolish Graffiti)

by Eric Garcetti, CD13

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following report from Eric Garcetti, Councilman for Council District 13, was given in response to an email describing a specific piece of graffiti in the Echo Park area.

Thanks for your note. I called the graffiti in the moment I saw it on the way home before the weekend and I am glad we have greatly reduced the frequency of tagging on Echo Park Blvd.--our statistics show a double-digit drop since we launched UNTAG (Uniting Neighborhoods To Abolish Graffiti).

When we launched UNTAG with Chief Bratton earlier this year, it was the result of months of research by myself and my staff to figure out how we could better address the causes, the sources, and the incidences of graffiti in the district. I spent a week with Mayor Ron Gonzales of San Jose, where he helped get graffiti reduced by 94% over an eight-year period. Like you, I, my office, and the city agencies tasked with taking care of graffiti get very frustrated with the cat-and-mouse game with the taggers. Yet Mayor Gonzales and every other expert I talked with said that this is the single most critical element of an overall anti-graffiti strategy. But it is not the only tool we have at our disposal.

It is true that most police folks know the tagging names of gang members, but we need physical evidence that those are the folks actually doing the tagging (courts have consistently thrown out cases based just on names, as anyone could tag with a well-known name, and it doesn't necessarily prove at the evidenciary standard needed that the individual known by that name did that tag). Frustrating, but an understandable protection. Thus, a critical component of the UNTAG strategy is working with police task forces in given areas to set up graffiti stings targeted at gang graffiti, which is the tip of the iceberg to much more dangerous crime when it is about marking gang territory. I remember the shoot-out on Echo Park Ave. earlier this year the same morning I went to launch the program with community block captains. The shoot-out was between taggers of two rival gangs and though no one was hurt, someone could have been killed two blocks from your and my house.

These task forces rely on physical evidence, cameras, and considerable police resources that we have been putting together. We have made arrests and we are working with the City Attorney's office on prosecution. If you are interested in adopting a "hot-spot", we need you and others to join the citizen corps of UNTAG block captains. Here in Echo Park, folks do great work as block captains. Block captains agree to adopt a block and can also adopt a hot-spot. They work with businesses to get agreements for city vendors to have permanent permission to paint out their businesses (instead of seeking permission from owners who are often not there each time we want to take down tags), they work on calling in tags for prioritized paint-outs, and they can (but do not have to) work with the police department on hot-spot stings. We also have preventative work in our schools and are developing a curriculum to use in the schools to divert would-be taggers.

A few months back, to baseline our situation here in CD13, everyone on my staff, from receptionist to chief of staff, went out and counted every single tag we could find on every street in the district--from lamposts to stopsigns, from streets to garages. We found a tagging rate in some places more than 10 times the worst that San Jose had. But from this baseline, tagging is down more than 30%. And out goal is to cut it in half by the end of next year.

These strategies, together, are proven and are also a new package of anti-graffiti tools in this area. Already, my colleagues have asked how they can do the same thing citywide and we are going to launch this throughout the city in the coming months. No one thing can do it alone -- paint-outs, block captains, enforcement/prosecution, and prevention. But as a unified whole, we can take back our neighborhood for everyone and not just have it be disrespected by a few.

For more information, please sign up as a block captain and visit the UNTAG web site at http://www.lacity.org/council/cd13/untag.htm

Shane Goldsmith (sgoldsmi@council.lacity.org) and 323-913-4693 is the UNTAG coordinator. You can always let the Echo Park field deputy, Mitch O'Farrell know about Echo Park concerns as well. And anyone can call our office (323-913-4693) to get prioritized graffiti paint-outs, though we encourage folks to do so as block captains, as we can track the progress better and help ensure that our paint-outs are prioritized.

Thanks for the kind words about our efforts and thanks for all you do on behalf of the neighborhood.

All the best,

Eric Garcetti

Councilmember Eric Garcetti
Los Angeles City Council, District 13

CITY HALL OFFICE:
City Hall, Room 470
200 North Spring Street
Los Angeles, California 90012
(213) 473-7013
(213) 613-0819 fax

FIELD OFFICE:
3525 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90026
(323) 913-4693
(323) 913-4474 fax

INTERNET ACCESS:
garcetti@council.lacity.org
www.cd13.com

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