Special to the Dispatch

editor@garlic.com

This story was written by Leadership Gilroy 2008.

Graffiti just keeps proliferating, but community volunteers and city officials are developing an arsenal to fight back.

Marvin Thomas, 77, is a part of the army.

"I'm supposed to be retired," he said in a typically graffiti-laden alley between Rosanna and Hanna streets. But since 1980, Thomas has been patrolling the alleys between Monterey Road and Princevalle Street fighting graffiti. He even carries around a graffiti kit he got from the city on his bicycle to erase the vandalism that he attributes to young people.

"We need to keep the pressure on. It is a war against young people." Thomas said. "It is a joint effort between the volunteers and the city."

Angela Locke-Paddon, Gilroy Police Department Community Services Officer, leads the city's graffiti abatement program.

"I pretty much live and breathe graffiti," she said after scrubbing and re-painting a resilient tagging on a utility box. There are 34 active tagging crews in Gilroy, Locke-Paddon said, and some of them use Internet-purchased, super-permanent markers that resist cleaning solutions. That means more time working with pungent solutions and dodging clouds of aerosol cover-up paint.

So what does she need?

"I wish we had cameras," she said in reference to a blanket of surveillance cameras downtown. Each camera costs $5,000, she said and that money would be easier found if the police department received state grants. But filing reports for about 300 calls a month requires too much time and would take her away from the field. Still, GPD Chief Denise Turner has also floated the idea of having businesses buy cameras the police could use to catch criminals.

"Our crime numbers look much better than many cities because of it, but we are probably not getting grants we are applying for," Turner said. "Cameras are a tool, a deterrent, and perhaps (vandals) won't select that business."

Meanwhile, victimized local business owners such as Wendyl Steiner - owner of Napa Auto Parts - have grown accustomed to cleaning up after taggers.

"I don't even read them," he said as he looked at fresh tags on the rear of his building at 7850 Monterey St., behind which sits South Valley Middle School. The wall's color this month is dark brown, because that is what the city supplied. Steiner has to special order Napa blue paint from corporate headquarters when vandals sully his side wall.

Steiner also wants cameras downtown and doesn't believe they would be an invasion of privacy, but a mural could solve the problem. Something like those he's seen in downtown Salinas, the city he's from.

"Some of these guys are pretty good artists," he said. "It could put (the taggers') talent to good use."

But murals don't always stop the tagging," Locke-Paddon said. There was a time when murals were immune from tagging, but now they are a frequent target. Vandals have repeatedly defaced the city's three murals along the levee and on Eighth Street. Paying a special paint contractor to seal the murals - which cost a lot in the first place - further taxes the police department.

Police recently arrested two juveniles responsible for more than $14,000 in damage across the city, which Steiner lauded.

"Some towns are doing nothing, so it's hard to come down on the police department, who are doing their best."

Police could do more, though, if more residents such as Thomas joined the fight.

"The town would be nothing without the people and its leadership," Thomas said.

View more photos of Cash-strapped police department tags graffiti with help of volunteers at our photo gallery.

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