Citizens fight back against vandalsCitizens fight back against vandalsJuly 4, 2003
Graffiti. Some may call it urban art, but those who saw the mess it left last week in Oakley would for the most part just call it vulgar. Every morning my son and I drive from one end of Vintage Parkway to the other to get to his school. On occasion we will get up early on a nice warm day and make the trip walking. Usually it is a relaxing walk to start the day, but that was before people started using the fences to display their personal style of "art."
OK, so in some inner city areas people consider the colorful writings on buildings an art form, but when people take spray paint and fill up fence posts and fences with initials of their names or obscene words, I'm sorry, but it isn't art; it is vandalism.
That is what happened last week. It wasn't that there weren't already graffiti problems along Vintage Parkway, but after last week every fence had scribbles on it. The language written on the fences was enough to even make my 9-year-old son want to help fix the problem.
His first words to me were, "Mom, can we go to the paint store and get some paint and clean this up?" If only other people could have the sensibilities of a 9-year-old boy.
If you have ever seen graffiti throughout town and wondered what the process is to have it cleaned up, according to Suzanne Murray, systems analyst for the city of Oakley, the responsibility usually falls on the property owners to remove the mess and pay the cost of repairs.
Unfortunately, Murray says, having to deal with each property owner could take more time to get the matter cleaned up, especially if the vandalism is done on rental property where it takes a letter from the landowner to get permission to remove the mess.
One nice thing is that Murray has been working with a network of people who are interested in keeping Oakley clean and are willing to volunteer their time to clean up the mess. That is what she did this past week. Using a list of local volunteer groups and people who have attended the city's COPPS meetings who indicated they would be willing to volunteer, she started the cleanup efforts on Vintage Parkway, as well as some of Big Break Road.
The group contacted all of the property owners that were affected by the graffiti and with their help cleaned up all of Vintage Parkway and Big Break Road, even some of the old graffiti that found its way there over last summer.
The only thing that Murray said they couldn't guarantee is that the paint matches. Unfortunately, old paint fades in some areas, is newer in others, and sometime just isn't available. So the colors didn't match everywhere, but the effect of cleaning up the obscene words is much better.
The concern is how long will it last. Murray said that the police have filled out a report and taken pictures of all of the graffiti and they will be keeping it on file. If any more graffiti turns up they will continue to do the same and look for patterns. If someone is caught spay painting, the police will look for similarities to the other incidents and add to the charge if applicable.
Murray said that there are times when people do get caught at the scene of the crime. She knows of two such recent cases.
So what can citizens do to help? First report all cases of new graffiti to the police on the non-emergency line that is in the phone book. The police will come out and make a report. For those who want to help clean up the mess, please call Murray at the city so that she can help coordinate the cleanup.
The most important thing to do is to teach our own children pride in our community. Then maybe we wouldn't have a graffiti problem in the first place, because no matter how you look at it, graffiti just makes our city look rundown and ugly.
Roni Gehlke's column on life in Oakley appears each week in the Brentwood News.
Distributed by the Contra Costa Times