![]() The crews, however, take pictures of the graffiti and store them in their system incase police later need the photos. Pacheco said the crews generally clear the graffiti before police show up. Police officials say there is no way of knowing if the drop in prosecuting cases means there's less graffiti. Last year the graffiti-removal program worked with El Paso police on prosecuting 25 cases, also the lowest in the last nine years and a 77 percent decrease from 110 cases in 2006. Herrera has moved on to other projects and coordinates other art workshops, but Border Youth continues with to coordinate art events, such as the annual Borderland Jam. He believes the decrease in the graffiti throughout El Paso stems from the early efforts he was involved in. "We talked to the people that were doing the spray painting and redirected that energy."Īside from beautifying the buildings and turning street taggers into artists who often covered up graffiti, Herrera said taggers respect murals, forcing them to refrain from spray painting on those walls. "We got to the root of the problem," he said. Border Youth Art Space Outreach, which Herrera founded in 1995, became an intermediary between people - many who previously spray painted illegally - and businesses that were willing to allow street art and murals on the walls of their business, often to cover up gang graffiti. In the past, Herrera organized several projects that provided people with a space to create aerosol art, subsequently reducing vandalism, he said. While graffiti is a nuisance for some, several businesses in El Paso allow graffiti to be done on their walls, and there is no ordinance that prohibits them from doing so.Īlthough Pacheco acknowledges the lack of an ordinance, he believes businesses that permit people to spray paint on their walls encourage illegal graffiti.Įl Paso muralist Dave "Grave" Herrera disagrees. The number was highest in 2008 when crews cleaned graffiti from 22,649 sites. Last year, crews removed graffiti from 16,010 sites, the lowest in nine years except for 10,499 sites in 2006, according to city data. He said workers remove graffiti from 15 to 20 sites daily. It takes anywhere from five minutes to remove graffiti from a mailbox to 30 minutes to clear it from a wall, Rivera said. When crews spot graffiti, they must get the property owner's permission to remove it, unless it's on city property. ![]() "We're hitting the sites before the public can call in," Rivera said. Pacheco and Rivera say the drop is the result of the crews regularly getting work done before residents put in a work order. The number has decreased steadily since 10,296 in 2010. The graffiti-removal program received 3,206 work requests to remove graffiti last year, the lowest in the last nine years. Posting stickers on surfaces is quicker and taggers run a lower risk of being caught in action.Īlthough the crews get work requests daily - 10 to 15, Rivera said - the amount has been decreasing in recent years. In turn, though, supervisors have noticed more sticker tagging, also known as slap tagging, sticker slapping and sticker bombing. Crews remove the graffiti before taggers can add to their piece and cover an entire wall, so they resort to smaller markings to not waste paint on pieces they wouldn't be able to finish, Pacheco and Rivera said. Supervisors - Pacheco and Rob Rivera - said graffiti markings, as a result, are smaller now. ![]() Now they receive requests instantly to their devices, which allows them to remove graffiti with less delay and sometimes create an efficient route as the work orders come in. Before having iPads, workers printed out a list of service requests each morning and often waited until the next day to get new requests, Graffiti Abatement Program Coordinator Fred Pacheco said.
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