Urban Scrawl : They’ve Got It Covered : Armed With Paint, Rollers and City Assistance, Residents Launch Counteroffensives in the War on Graffiti Taggers. Often It Comes Down to a Battle of Wills.

In the campaign against graffiti, a reliable alarm clock and a willingness to beat the sunrise can be as important as a bucket of paint and a sturdy roller.

“Graffiti should never see the light of day,” said Patsy Carter of the 23rd Street Neighbors. The group, whose members live just north of USC, has achieved a measure of success in its battle against graffiti by waking up in the wee hours to paint over nocturnal scribblings.

Graffiti--an Italian word meaning scratchings or scribblings--is hardly a new phenomenon. Anthropologists have even found ancient graffiti on the monuments of Egypt and the ruins of Pompeii.

Yet few places can compare with the miles of urban scrawl in Los Angeles County, concentrated in, but no longer confined to, Central Los Angeles.

“It’s ugly, it’s an eyesore and it’s always there,” said Lori Gay, president of Neighborhood Housing Services of Los Angeles, a neighborhood revitalization group. Beyond aesthetic complaints, merchants and property owners say, graffiti scares away prospective customers or tenants.

Faced with a seemingly endless task, civic groups, public employees, law enforcement officials and some hardy individuals attack graffiti with a mixture of gritty determination, education and coercion.

On the other side of the graffiti abatement debate are young artists and their supporters who argue that more legal opportunities for youths to practice their brand of expression, rooted in hip-hop street culture, might cut down on tagging. Some say a community approach is needed that directs youths to available art and recreation programs while supporting counseling, mandatory cleanups and legal sanctions for violators.

Taggers, responsible for the recent explosion of graffiti, are mostly looking for recognition, but they lack direction, positive role models and “don’t know what else to do,” said Man One, 21, an artist who has legally obtained permission to paint graffiti-style murals at a number of sites. “There are problems in the city and that’s why there is graffiti. It’s a symptom of bigger problems.”

But, so far, programs specifically designed to deter tagging, such as the Los Angeles Conservation Corps’ Clean and Green program and the independent Graffiti Arts Coalition, have reached a small number of taggers.

Meanwhile, graffiti eradication remains an expensive problem that diverts scant funds from other projects. Indeed, $66 million in private and public funds were spent in 1991 on graffiti removal in Los Angeles County, according to the state Department of Transportation.

The city’s own efforts to clean up graffiti will cost about $3.7 million this year. At least half of the city’s more than 30 departments use part of their budgets to erase graffiti, according to city figures.

Many of the city’s efforts against graffiti are coordinated by Operation Clean Sweep, a program housed in a cramped City Hall office. The program coordinates volunteer cleanup projects, provides free paint to groups and individuals, and responds to requests to paint over graffiti. Last year 5,000 calls were made to its hot line requesting paint-outs.

“We try to get community groups involved because the only successful way to get graffiti off so that it stays off is to get people involved,” said Paul Racs, one of the operation’s coordinators. “That way, as soon as the slightest bit pops up, there’s someone on it.”

Community involvement ranges from civic organizations and neighborhood groups to merchants and hardy individuals who roll up their sleeves in the daily fight to make a dent in the problem.

Mabelle Pittman, a member of the 108th-Hoover Street Neighborhood Assn., encourages her neighbors not to give up. Pittman and others paint over graffiti once a month in their neighborhood. “I tell people, ‘This is where you live, you raised your kids here and maybe your grandkids. If you don’t plan on moving, plan on improving.’

“I pray on the place where we paint. People must get for real about this.”

In Westlake, John Mills of the 5th and Bonnie More Advocates for Safer Homes organizes neighborhood cleanups and tries to keep up with the latest markings. “You’ve got to keep plugging,” Mills said. “Once you start on a wall, you can’t quit. They paint, I paint, they paint, I paint. By about the fifth time I usually win.”

On a recent Saturday, Mills gathered about 120 volunteers from local organizations to clean up several blocks in Westlake. The volunteers--junior high school students to senior citizens--painted from 8:30 a.m. to noon while Brian Gilman, senior lead officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division, kept watch and Officer Webster Wong pitched in with a spray gun carried by a trailer attached to his patrol car. Wong and volunteer Albert Crnkovich, 68, a retired truck driver and restaurant manager who lives in Westlake, can be found nearly every Saturday somewhere in the Rampart Division spraying over graffiti.

Back near USC, Carter said her 23rd Street neighborhood had “massive amounts” of graffiti until about three years ago when she and her neighbors committed themselves to its obliteration.

By going out before dawn and painting over graffiti done the night before, the group hopes to show vandals that they are wasting time and paint, Carter said. “We wanted them to feel like a punch in the gut when they saw it was gone, just like the punch in the gut we had when we saw it,” she said.

Carter is not without compassion for youths whose tagging may be a misguided response to family or social problems and a cry for recognition of some sort. But she is also concerned about how graffiti affects a neighborhood.

She points to the “broken-windows theory” put forth by criminologist James Q. Wilson. It suggests that instances of vandalism--broken windows, trash, graffiti--left unattended will attract more vandalism. If a neighborhood leaves graffiti on a wall, it’s a sign no one cares and anything goes, Carter said.

Aaron Collins, owner of a shoe store at 83rd Street and Vermont Avenue, said the effect of graffiti along his block is lost revenue. “It scares people away. They see the graffiti and keep on going. They don’t even notice us here.”

With the threat of lost sales in mind, Ralph Carmona of the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce is trying to get local businesses to paint over graffiti or contact his office to do it.

Like many community organizations, the chamber supervises court-referred juvenile offenders who do cleanup work as part of their community-service sentences. But Carmona must battle the sentiment among some merchants that painting over graffiti is wasted effort.

“That’s like saying, ‘Why should I make my bed if I’m just going to sleep in it again tonight?’ ” Carmona said.

In some cases, apathy or fear are to blame for reluctance to tackle the problem.

“Some people are afraid to paint graffiti out,” said Gay of Neighborhood Housing Services. “They tend to see all graffiti as gang graffiti, which is a form of communication, and they fear retribution if they paint it out.”

Recent reports of violence by some youths involved in tagging feed that fear, others say.

A few groups try multifaceted approaches.

With a grant from Sears Savings Bank, the Adams-Normandie Neighborhood Assn. bought a spray gun and compressor to make painting out easier. But the group will also use some of the money to commission neighborhood murals by the Graffiti Arts Coalition.

The Korean Youth & Community Center operates a graffiti-removal program using court referrals as part of its Koreatown Beautification Project, but it is also developing a separate graffiti-removal business to provide jobs for inner-city youths.

On the government level, city, county, and state officials are working with private groups to develop coordinated responses through the Multi-Agency Graffiti Intervention Committee.

Alan F. Pegg, general manager of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, calls graffiti “the single largest problem that we face as an institution today.”

The RTD spent $13 million last year to clean graffiti from its buses. This year, it has added juvenile offenders to its cleanup crews as one way to discourage vandals. And it has expanded its anti-graffiti community outreach and education program in junior high schools.

A zero-tolerance program on the RTD’s 30-31 Line, which passes through Mid-Wilshire, Downtown, East Los Angeles and Monterey Park, calls for graffiti to be cleaned off buses within one round trip, or the buses are removed from service until cleaned.

The pilot program is showing promise, but it is time-consuming. “The time spent cleaning buses is time we could be doing maintenance on them,” said Harold Anderson, an RTD mechanic.

Caltrans spends about $3 million in Los Angeles and Ventura counties to clean graffiti off its structures, including overhead freeway signs, some of which are now protected by razor wire. And law enforcement officials are stepping up efforts to track and apprehend taggers through TAGNET, an information-exchange network.

In 1992, the city of Los Angeles’ Operation Clean Sweep assisted with 239 neighborhood cleanups involving 19,179 volunteers who used 6,852 gallons of recycled paint to cover 411,000 square-feet of graffiti, Racs said. Other individuals and groups assisted by Operation Clean Sweep covered 995,880 square feet. An additional 4.3 million square-feet were painted over by 13 community-based organizations under contract with Operation Clean Sweep to respond to graffiti-removal requests.

All told, Operation Clean Sweep and its contractors painted out more than 130 acres of graffiti in 1992.

Visible year-round in their green T-shirts, junior high school students in the Los Angeles Conservation Corps’ Clean and Green program, which receives city funds, also remove graffiti and work on murals as a preventive measure.

There is no consensus, however, on whether murals and graffiti-style art painted on walls with the permission of the owners deter random tagging.

Last summer, Carmelo Alvarez, human services coordinator for the Clean and Green program, worked with young artists and taggers, explaining laws against graffiti vandalism, teaching them how to seek permission to work on a wall and helping them develop their artistic ability.

“Tagging is destructive, but let’s look at why kids are doing it and let’s get some alternatives for them,” Alvarez said.

One 17-year-old juvenile offender now working off his sentence by cleaning graffiti off buses said one of the reasons many youths mark up walls is simply for amusement and recognition. “Someone who was never popular can become popular that way,” he said.

And young artists who do legal “pieces” concede that marking buildings, walls and buses without permission is vandalism, which blurs distinctions between street art, gang messages and tagging in the minds of the public.

For the most part, the walls with murals, including two painted with the building owner’s permission at Hoover Street and Venice Boulevard by a 19-year-old named Cre8, remain relatively free of graffiti; other surfaces around the mini-mall there are replete with gang markings and tags.

Graffiti in all forms are a reflection of life in the city, said Cre8, a resident of South-Central Los Angeles. He has followed the development of graffiti art and murals in New York and Los Angeles since he was 9 and painted backgrounds for the film “South Central.”

“Right now young people are influenced by tagging because that’s what they see,” he said. “I was influenced by older (taggers). Maybe if there were more murals and more places for people to express themselves everything would turn out better.”

But some graffiti-busters, such as Jay Beswick of the National Graffiti Information Network, say legal walls attract more unsightly tagging.

“Taggers are caterpillars and graffiti artists are the butterflies, but you have to put up with 10,000 tags to get to the artists,” Beswick said.

Adolfo Nodal, head of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, said law enforcement and punitive measures need to be supplemented with education, and with arts and recreation programs. “We have to come to a common understanding to get rid of vandalism, but we also have to find supportive activities that provide positive alternatives for kids,” Nodal said.

As many as 100,000 youths have some contact with the city’s arts programs at sites such as the Watts Towers Art Center and the Junior Arts Center, but thousands more cannot be accommodated, according to the Cultural Affairs Department.

Nevertheless, a lack of art or recreation programs is no excuse for vandalism, say law enforcement officials. Art or not, state law says it is illegal to place any markings on private or public property without permission.

California law also prohibits retailers from selling spray-paint to minors, and a recently upheld city ordinance requires spray-paint and markers to be stored out of view. But the state law is not aggressively enforced and some graffiti vandals steal paint and markers or buy them from adults.

Among the penalties for graffiti offenses are fines, probation, community service and incarceration in a youth facility. Some cases are also referred to juvenile traffic court, where juveniles convicted of graffiti vandalism can expect a large fine, community service and the loss or delay of their driver’s license for one year, said Robert Tafoya, supervising referee in the Superior Court’s juvenile traffic division.

A city ordinance also requires property owners to remove graffiti from their buildings. Though the law is not heavily enforced because of too few inspectors, a group of property owners on Witmer Street in Westlake is using it to remind owners of graffiti-laden buildings of their legal obligation.

The owners hired Gary Swan, a former apartment manager and volunteer in the Los Angeles Police Department’s crime prevention program, to help them keep graffiti off their apartment buildings. Working in cooperation with apartment managers and the police, Swan has cleaned up many of the buildings and identified some of the vandals.

Said one owner who requested anonymity: “In the matter of a month, by painting out the graffiti and keeping it off, people are starting to come back to rent. Some owners were on the verge of losing their building because of vacancies.”

Taking personal responsibility for eradicating graffiti is the key to success, said Barry Steinhart, who operates a professional graffiti-removal service, Graffiti Protective Coatings.

Although he fights graffiti for a living, often using a protective wax coating that is easily removed along with the graffiti, Steinhart wonders why more people don’t take care of it themselves.

“Everybody complains, but why don’t they clean it up or demand that their landlords clean it up?” he said. “If people painted it out right away, after about three months they’d be surprised how well it works.”

Removing Graffiti Here are some tips for do-it-yourself graffiti removal: When using a light-colored paint, apply a primer over the graffiti first.

Try to use the same color paint each time and avoid patches of different colored paint, which serve as a frame for graffiti vandals. Paint the whole wall rather than patches.

Invest in high-quality paints. Cheaper paints often fade quickly, which may leave patches.

Preserve used roller pads by wrapping them in wet paper towels and placing them in plastic bags.

Install lights over areas frequently vandalized at night.

Encourage neighbors, apartment managers and local businesses to remove graffiti. A group effort will be more successful.

Source: Barry Steinhart, Graffiti Protective Coatings

Agencies That Can Help

Several city and state agencies offer graffiti removal free of charge:

Operation Clean Sweep: For graffiti removal on city property (streets, sidewalks, traffic signs, etc.) and on private property owned or controlled by the reporting individual. A crew can respond within two weeks; requests for paint can be met within two days. (213) CLEAN-UP (253-2687).

Department of Building and Safety: For graffiti on private property not owned by the reporting individual. An inspector will verify the graffiti and then refer the cleanup request to the Department of Public Works and Operation Clean Sweep. (213) 485-7091

Caltrans: For graffiti on freeway signs or sound walls.

(213) 897-0383

Department of Water and Power: For graffiti on DWP property.

(213) 481-8801

Los Angeles Police Department: To report an act of graffiti vandalism in progress, call 911. To request graffiti removal through the Police Assisted Community Enhancement (PACE) program, contact the nearest police station to fill out a community enhancement request form.

For graffiti removal in Southeast Los Angeles County cities, call:

Bell (213) 581-4357

Commerce (213) 887-4444

Huntington Park (213) 584-6218

Vernon (213) 583-8811

Cudahy (213) 771-STOP

Bell Gardens (310) 806-4532

Maywood (213) 562-5000

South Gate (213) 249-5799