Report graffiti tags on vandal website

Community members are being urged to use a website to report graffiti and help to track down offenders.

Police are encouraging community members to use the VandalTrak website to upload photographs of graffiti tags at various locations around West Gippsland.

Senior sergeant Ann-Marie Stevens said there had been a recent spate of graffiti incidents and police believed the community had a crucial role in helping to identify offenders.

Sen sgt Stevens said reporting the incidents on VandalTrak not only identified common tags being used, it helped police to identify hotspot areas and trends.

The VandalTrak website allows community members to take a photograph of graffiti and upload them to the site.

This is then shared with police, council and cleaning agencies.

Sen sgt Stevens said once an offender was arrested and linked to a ‘tag’ they then could be charged with all of the offences and subsequently be handed a much higher penalty at court.

She said often offenders could be identified through CCTV footage, which was now located in key areas around the Warragul central business district and monitored by police 24 hours a day.

Sen sgt Stevens said as well as being an act of criminal damage, graffiti was a cost to the community, with the majority of graffiti being on public property and therefore council left cleaning up the mess.

Baw Baw Shire indicated it spends $25,000 a year cleaning up graffiti around the shire.

A shire spokesperson said this cost included in-house cleaning of graffiti on public toilets, street furniture, street and road signs, playgrounds, bus shelters, barbecue shelters, roads and footpaths as well as contractor painting and pressure cleaning.

VandalTrak is an integrated community crime management system involving communities, councils and law enforcement.

There have been 56,000 incidents reported via the website and more than 215,000 photographs uploaded.

The website’s graffiti register means when graffiti incidents are uploaded, they are mapped, catalogued and made accessible to police investigators, volunteer cleanup groups, utility companies, contractors and councils.

To report local graffiti incidents, log in at www.vandaltrak.com