Rose Garden Resident

News

Reported graffiti bigger problem this year

By Lydia Sarraille

After an eight-year decline, graffiti has come back with a vengeance in San Jose. The number of reported incidents has gone from 129 to 2,594 over the past year, according to a citywide survey taken by the San Jose anti-graffiti and litter program.

The increase reverses the downward trend the city has seen over the past eight years. Since the first survey was taken in 1999, police had seen a reduction in reported incidents of graffiti from 71,541 to 129 by 2006.

This year's upswing has affected the entire city, according to survey results.

In the Rose Garden, neighbors have reported graffiti on their cars in recent weeks.

Brett Miles, who lives on the corner of Hester and Dana avenues, said his blue van was etched on Feb. 15 with the letters "XIV" and "ESSJ," known symbols of the Norteño gangs, according to police.

"They do it when no one is looking," Miles said.

Miles said he has noticed a higher incidence of graffiti in his neighborhood recently. "It's a weird, cyclical thing," Miles said. "You'll see it happen more and more for a while, and then it's like they go on vacation and then there's nothing."

Miles said he has had to remove graffiti several times from his property in the past, and despite his best efforts to deter the vandals with security lights and a protective pet dog, it seems to be a persistent, though sporadic, problem.

"It happens," Miles said. "I don't want to say that graffiti and vandalism are necessarily the price of living in a big city, but there's a certain amount of this sort of thing that you just come to expect."

Gordon Castro, senior maintenance worker with the anti-graffiti and litter program, said the recent upswing in graffiti may have to do with funding losses.

"We've lost personnel and funding," Castro said. "It makes it hard to clean up the graffiti as quickly."

The key to solving the graffiti problem, Castro said, is to clean it up as soon as possible.

"It's a territorial thing," Castro said. "The longer it stays up, the more bragging rights [the perpetrators] have and the more emboldened they will become. If you take it down right away and they see that they can't keep up, they will move on."

Jeff Rogers, president of the Shasta Hanchett Park Neighborhood Association, said his organization is working to diminish graffiti in the area by asking for more involvement in neighborhood watch programs as well as the San Jose Police Department STOP program.

By joining the program, which stands for Stop Trespassing on Public/Private Property, home and business owners can authorize the SJPD to take enforcement action against trespassers on their property.

Rogers said he believes getting more people to sign up for this program will help relieve the graffiti and vandalism problems his neighborhood is experiencing.

"When the neighborhood association got the businesses on The Alameda to participate in STOP, we saw a big improvement," Rogers said.

Castro said only 6 percent to 7 percent of graffiti is gang-related on average, so a bump in graffiti does not necessarily mean a bump in gang activity.

The best thing people can do to deter the vandalism is to report incidents right away and join the volunteers who work for the anti-graffiti program to receive free paint to cover it up, Castro said.

To volunteer and receive free paint to cover up graffiti or to report graffiti, call 408.277.3208. To report graffiti, call the 24-hour hotline at 408.277.2758.