Graffiti rampage in west end, downtown
They’ve tagged glass window panes, brick, stucco and concrete walls — even vehicles.
A rash of graffiti incidents across west St. Catharines and the downtown over the past two weeks has one councillor asking for a staff report on how big the problem is and what the city can do.
St. Andrew’s Coun. Joe Kushner said a rampage of graffiti in west St. Catharines last week left at least one business tagged for the second or third time and parked vehicles vandalized.
“I don’t recall vehicles being tagged too often, but they have this time,” Kushner said, adding the businesses and vehicles were hit on St. Paul Street West. “It appears they went downtown and did likewise.”
Kushner, who sits on the environmental sustainability committee, said one citizen who was outraged about the number of incidents asked him to get an update from city staff about graffiti.
The staff report requested Monday will include the number of graffiti incidents reported to the city over the past two years, the amount of graffiti removed by the city and private property owners, and whether the city has a process of sharing graffiti-related data with other municipalities, including Niagara Region, and police.
Downtown was hit hard early this spring by graffiti vandals.
St. Catharines Downtown Association executive director Tisha Polocko said tagging in
cidents usually taper off in the winter, so the latest round caught the group off guard.
“I was really kind of shocked because once the weather gets inclement and a little colder we don’t see an uptake where there has been this time around,” she said.
“Normally, we don’t really have a lot of resources to clean it once it gets colder, so it’s been a really tough battle this year trying to keep up with it.”
The downtown association has a pool of money specifically for graffiti cleaning, sometimes done by staff and other times by a company if the tags are large or high up on a wall. The association also documents the incidents with photographs and makes city bylaw officers aware.
Polocko said the clean city committee, of which she is a member, is trying to figure out exactly what it can do to make people aware graffiti is a criminal offence.
“It’s takes them such little time to make such a huge impact,” she said. “Something that takes them10 seconds takes us a couple of hours to clean up.”
In the past two months, Niagara Regional Police have received when a graffiti vandal is caught in the act by police, that person is let off lightly by the courts.
Kushner cited a case from earlier this year, when a 27-yearold Welland man caught spray painting the side of a St. Paul Street building was granted a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to mischief under $5,000. The discharge means there will be no conviction registered against him if he abides by probation conditions for the next 12 months, which includes that he not have spray paint in his possession.
“When you have a penalty like that,” Kushner said, “it’s not really a deterrent.”