Police in the hunt for ‘taggers’
Niagara Regional Police Constables Dennis Andree and Chad Davidson check out graffiti under Hwy. 406 near Fourth Ave. on Friday. Police are stepping up efforts to catch “taggers” who have been spraying paint on buildings and underpasses in St. Catharines. See story on
It’s a whole other world of urban paint sprawl underneath Hwy. 406.
The wall-to-wall graffiti extends about a kilometre next to Twelve Mile Creek, tucked into corners, splattered in seemingly out-of-reach spots and wrapped around concrete pillars where water is low.
Aerosol can lids are discarded among the rocks next to multi-coloured signatures, some of which are several feet high and fairly elaborate.
“You don’t just show up and paint one of these. This is refined through months, if not years of practice,” says Niagara Regional Police Const. Chad Davidson.
“It’s going to show up at home. It’s going to show up in school assignments.”
The NRP’s school resource officers, working with the street crime unit, have started directed patrols in response to a resurgence of graffiti in St. Catharines.
While the most obvious problems are above ground, police are targeting areas like under the highway where they know taggers will be in an effort to identify individuals and match them with graffiti popping up elsewhere in the city.
Tags have been showing up on buildings, signs and windows, with one downtown business owner saying it’s the worst he’s seen in eight years.
Davidson said it may be one or two people who are causing the most damage, making the problem seem more widespread than it is.
“Whoever’s doing these right now, this is probably our biggest problem in the city,” Davidson said, pointing out Rewl and Feamr tags that are rampant.
“I don’t think they appreciate how much it costs a small business,” said Const. Dennis Andree, a school resource officer, during a walk with Davidson downtown Friday where dozens of businesses have been tagged.
Police estimate it costs at least $50 — and that’s at the lowest end — for a property owner to clean up graffiti due to the time and resources it takes away from their regular business.
“You look at this. What’s it going to cost to remove this?” said Davidson, pointing to silver paint letters that have been sprayed on brick on St. Paul St.
“That’s a cost to business owners they shouldn’t have to be paying out.”
Tisha Polocko, executive director of the St. Catharines Downtown Association, said there’s more graffiti now than they’ve seen in a number of years.
The association has been trying to work at cleaning it up, but it’s been tough.
“Something that may take someone 30 seconds to do takes so long to clean up. And then the clean up process can be so arduous. It’s really, really frustrating and it doesn’t help an area or community at all.”
The city has a graffiti bylaw in place that requires property owners to remove graffiti within seven days of being served with a notice. It has an assistance program to pay property owners 50% of the cost of removal to a maximum payment of $500.
The association helps out with graffiti remover and clean up.
For its part, the city tries to remove graffiti on its property within 48 hours of being made aware of it.
“Our approach is to remove it as quickly as possible. Obviously graffiti tends to encourage more graffiti,” said Jeffery Silcox-Childs, manager of parks for St. Catharines.
Parks staff will report what they see, but Silcox-Childs said residents are reminded to call it in as quickly as they can, too.
“We really rely on our staff and our community members to report it as soon as they see it and then we’ll remove it as quickly as possible.”
Polocko also urged businesses to report what they see to police so they can document it.
Already in three weeks police have had some success identifying tag trends and catching three individuals through targeted enforcement.
Davidson said the assumption was the tagging was being done overnight, but Andree caught one youth tagging at 1:30 p.m. under the highway. The teen told him he was allowed to paint there because he saw it on Google.
They believe there are three crews working in the city and not all are kids. Officers have been told to keep an eye out for individuals walking around with spray cans but it’s not easy to catch someone like that in the act.
An individual with a marker in his pocket can go from one end of St. Paul St. to the other and be done tagging everything in 20 minutes, Davidson said.
Sticker tags are also being used — created at home in mass quantities using shipping labels so they can be stuck to a public surface faster.
That’s where police are hoping vigilant parents will pick up on the indicators.
With individual styles developed over time, police say it’s hard to believe taggers are doing it without family, friends and fellow students seeing the signs, whether it’s a doodle on a notebook similar to one of a wall or a collection of paint cans.
“Either mom and dad are blissfully ignorant or they don’t get out much,” Davidson said.