Photo taken in March by Ryan ZumMallen
4:00pm | In a city that experiences lot of graffiti and tagging, officials from the Long Beach Graffiti Abatement Program yesterday announced that 99% of graffiti is removed within 24 hours of being reported to the 24-Hour Graffiti Hotline.
The program has achieved the 99% rate for the past three years, according to a press release. About 20,000 tags are removed from 3,500 sites in a typical year.
The 24-hour number to report graffiti is 562.570.2773 or [email protected].
“I will do everything in my power to keep graffiti from taking root in our beautiful city,” said City Manager Pat West. “The City of Long Beach has an excellent graffiti removal program, and I encourage everyone in the community, including all City Employees, to report graffiti whenever they see it throughout our city.”
Graffiti is prevalent in many areas of Long Beach, and can signal gang activity such as turf battles. Even if the graffiti is not gang-related – perhaps the work of smaller tagging crews – it defaces property and the recent press release says it diminishes home values, quality of life and attracts crime.
The City of Long Beach contracts graffiti removal services to Graffiti Protective Coatings (GPC), which water- or air-blasts graffiti on a variety of surfaces and also removes stickers.
During an interview I was conducting in May with the makers of a documentary about local skateboarders, the graffiti removal team was on site to clean up a tag that was created only hours before. The filmmakers said that the skaters are fiercely protective of the skatepark and do not allow tagging.
There is artistic expression and then there is vandalism. Anyone with the urge to tag for the sake of art can find other outlets to display their creativity. Tagging leads to territorialism and crime. Report graffiti to the Long Beach Graffiti Abatement Program at 562.570.2773.
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