San Jose fights graffiti surge

By John Woolfolk jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com Posted: 09/18/2011 03:14:12 PM PDT Updated: 09/18/2011 03:14:13 PM PDT

San Jose has seen a sharp spike in graffiti, up 38 percent from a year ago to the highest number of documented tags since 1999.

The surge comes at a time when budget cuts have forced the city to outsource its cleanup work.
City officials say annual surveys done each January since 1999 noted 44,405 graffiti tags citywide this year, up from 29,285 in January 2010. That was the highest figure since the city first started tracking graffiti tags in 1999 and counted 71,541. The City Council will consider the issue Tuesday.
"The volume of graffiti is higher," said Mike Will, a San Jose parks manager who oversees graffiti abatement, adding that reasons for the spike are a mystery. There hasn't been a greater number of any particular type of graffiti, he said.
"It's generally everything," Will said. "Maybe it's something to do with the economy, people's frustrations. We're still talking to experts and police to see what's going on."
Mario Maciel, superintendent of the mayor's gang task force, doesn't believe the surge is related to gang activity and blames "tagging crews" of high-school kids who thrive on the thrill of spreading their tags all over town.
"When there's a quantifiable spike, it's these tagging crews," Maciel said. "It's the whole notoriety among their subculture. That's how they validate themselves. We see that as a social epidemic."
San Jose saw sharp drops in graffiti from 2000 through 2003, and the number of reported tags generally held between 2,000 and 4,000 for the next several years. But in 2008 the number jumped to 13,902 and has risen dramatically each year since.
City officials in the latest January survey noted the sharpest one-year tagging increase in the city's fifth council district, centered in East San Jose, where the volume nearly tripled. District 7 in central San Jose also saw a substantial rise in graffiti. Downtown's District 3 as well as West San Jose's District 1 and the Cambrian area's District 9 also saw increases. Tagging volume dropped elsewhere.
Councilman Xavier Campos, who represents District 5, said he has noticed the surge in tagging and vowed in a statement Friday to devote city resources to fight it.
"Despite our budget cuts, we can not allow for the city's graffiti problems to spiral out of control," Campos said. "Under my watch, I will work to get to the bottom of what has caused the recent increases. The taxpayers expect better, and as council member of a district that is plagued with graffiti, I intend on making sure they get the benefit of every dollar they spend."
To close a $115 million budget deficit in June, San Jose officials outsourced the city's graffiti abatement program to a private contractor to save $1 million. Under a $633,000 contract with the city, Graffiti Protective Coatings Inc. is taking a somewhat different approach to cleaning up tags. By taking time to match paint to the vandalized surface, they are working to erase not only the tags but evidence that they've been painted over.
Will said that because the city had a limited variety of paint colors, its graffiti abatement crews could seldom match the original surface when painting over tags. Over time, he said, those surfaces began looking splotchy, giving them away as prime graffiti targets.
"You ended up with a quilt-patch of covered graffiti, which in many cases looks just as bad," Will said, noting that those surfaces were often quickly vandalized again.
Barry Steinhart, general manager of Graffiti Protective Coatings, said San Jose isn't alone in seeing a surge in graffiti.
"Everybody's increasing," Steinhart, whose Los Angeles-based company also has served Alameda County and the cities of Santa Cruz, Long Beach, Santa Ana and Mesa, Ariz. "Graffiti's a problem everywhere. It's like a sport to these kids."
Steinhart said he was surprised how much graffiti there was in San Jose but that his crews are working to paint over tagged areas so that they don't invite repeat vandalism and are easier to manage. The company's crews are starting in the hard-hit East San Jose area.
"They had a lot more graffiti than we anticipated," Steinhart said. "It's just going to take a little bit of time to get everything under control and where it needs to be."