Going after graffiti
Police get tough on graffiti and track down a prolific tagger who vandalized sites all over the city; now he faces jail time and $75,000 in restitution
WOONSOCKET – A months-long game of cat and mouse came to an end Thursday with the arrest of one of the city’s most prolific graffiti scrawlers – an unemployed 26-year-old police say was responsible for tagging dozens of park fixtures, railroad cars, trailer trucks and utility poles.
Joshua Carey, 26, of 22 First Ave., allegedly tagged more than 150 in- dividual pieces of property, including multiple fixtures in Costa Park, across the street from his apartment, incurring an estimated $75,000 in cleanup and repair costs.
In all, Carey is facing five counts of vandalism stemming from complaints lodged against him by the city, National Grid, Providence & Worcester Railroad and The Plastics Group of America, a recycling company located at 84 Fairmount St. whose freight trucks were tagged.
During an impromptu briefing about Carey’s arrest Friday morning, Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and Police Chief Thomas F. Oates III said Carey’s arrest was the result of a dogged investigation that began with a tip – a tip police
received after the administration offered a $200 reward for information leading to the arrest of so-called graffiti artists in September.
Detective Captain Michael Lemoine received the initial information and passed it along to Detective Anthony J. Conetta Jr. The detective discovered that Carey was maintaining a digital portfolio of his work on social media, marking each graffito with a unique, signature-like tag, “Easer.” The city is still offering $200 rewards for information leading to the arrest of other taggers who are active and police urge anyone with useful information to come forward.
“They think they’re artists,” said Chief Oates. “But in fact they’re criminals committing vandalism.”
Like many who fancy themselves artists, taggers are proud of their work and want to see it last – one reason graffiti ends up in hardto-reach places like the roofline of the Hospital Trust building on Main Street – not Carey’s work, incidentally. But Carey recently managed to get to the railroad trestle that spans Truman Drive, hitting it with a splotch of spray paint that’s especially noticeable from the window of City Solicitor John DeSimone’s office on the third floor of City Hall, according to Baldelli-Hunt.
A small, tight-knit clique of graffiti artists may think they’re creating masterworks for the ages, but Oates says most people, including police and city officials, see it for what it is – visual blight. Nothing works better than a scourge of graffiti to drag down a neighborhood’s self esteem or give it the tarnish of an area that’s sinking into neglect.
Baldelli-Hunt said she was “thrilled” when she found out the city’s reward program had resulted in an arrest and she offered her congratulations to the officers who were involved in the investigation.
Short of catching them in the act, which rarely happens, “Finding graffiti artists is not easy,” said the mayor. “These are the kinds of things that happen very quietly behind the scenes that make Woonsocket a better place to live.”
Baldelli-Hunt said the lion’s share of the damages caused by graffiti is associated with the labor needed to clean it up. She said the city seeks to remove graffiti as quickly as possible because leaving it sends a message of tolerance for vandalism that’s likely to encourage more graffiti artists.
The time public works crews spend scouring away and painting over graffiti “takes them away from other work in the city,” said the mayor.
Lemoine said he turned over the tip to Detective Conetta because he is a juvenile specialist in gangs and graffiti, which are often connected. In this case, Lemoine said Carey does not appear to have any gang affiliation, though he was maintaining a digital catalogue of his work on social media that police believe was intended, in part, for viewing by other graffiti artists.
After assembling enough information to tie Carey to the vandalism, Conetta obtained a warrant for his arrest and took him into custody from his third floor apartment at 22 First Ave. shortly after noon Thursday. Police said he was asleep in one of the bedrooms when they arrived.
Among other things, police seized two cans of spray paint as evidence.
When police showed him a collection of photographs depicting roughly 170 individual graffiti incidents, Carey confessed that he was responsible for most of them, Detective Sgt. Matt Ryan said.
The mayor said the city is pushing for full restitution in the case, but it’s unclear how that might be structured until the case is resolved.
Following a preliminary appearance in District Court, a judge set bail at $500 on the vandalism charges Friday, but he was held for another hearing as a violator of his sentence on a prior conviction on robbery charges out of Johnston, according to the judiciary’s web site. That hearing was set for later Friday, but the results were not available at press time.
Carey was sentenced to 15 years in the robbery, with five to serve and 10 suspended, with probation, effective April 7, 2014. If he’s declared to have violated the terms of his probation by committing new graffiti crimes, Carey could be ordered to serve a portion of that suspended sentence at the Adult Correctional Institutions.
His next hearing on the vandalism charges is Feb. 12.
Meanwhile, Chief Oates urges anyone with information about graffiti artists to pass it along to the police at 766-1212.
“We do actively follow up on any tip or information that we get,” he said, “and if you see it happening, call police immediately.”