Community cleanup: Resident help will end graffiti’s rise, police say

Published 10:15 am Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Graffiti damage to the men’s room at Snoqualmie Ridge Community Park. Vigilant citizen response and police work solved this case. The teens arrested have been asked to make up for the damage.

When teenagers spot him and start ducking out of sight, Mark Pray knows there’s trouble brewing at Torguson Park.

As North Bend Parks Lead, it’s his job to keep city parks at their best. That puts Pray at odds with the perennial problem of graffiti.

In Pray’s 15 years on the job in the North Bend Parks Department, he’s caught his share of taggers, from 10-year-old boys to men in their 20s who should know better.

“It ranges from the good kids that you never have a problem with to repeat offenders,” Pray said. “On occasion, grown boys.”

The city’s public bathrooms and both Torguson and EJ Roberts Parks are graffiti favorites, but Pray can’t find much logic to the vandalism.

“It can be anywhere at all—out on the skate park, or concealed inside the bathrooms,” he said. Power company-owned utility boxes get hit a lot. North Bend doesn’t own those, but it often ends up  painting them.

“If we want the grounds to be kept up, we have to just get on it,” Pray said. Blatant, obvious foul language is a priority target.

So far this year year, graffiti has been a nuisance. But past years have seen major spikes. In 2008, Mayor Ken Hearing called a town forum on the issue. Pray remembers confronting serious graffiti problems at downtown businesses and city water tanks—dozens of tags requiring hundreds of work-hours to remove.

“Right now, it’s quiet. Keep in mind that the weather hasn’t been great, and kids aren’t out of school—which increases things exponentially,” Pray said. “You’re not going to see it go anywhere but up, until school starts and the rain comes back.”

Consequences

On the night of March 19, a small group of teens went wild with paint on Snoqualmie Ridge. Their tags marred the stairwell at the Ridge Fitness building, signs at Stillwater Bog interpretive center and covered much of the men’s room at Community Park with “SOG” tags in black, white, red and day-glo green. Police estimate the spree caused more than $2,000 in damage.

The damage was the latest visitation of a plague of vandalism in Snoqualmie parks, bridges and signs in the last year.

Thanks to a report by a vigilant citizen, and police work with schools that led to a mark on a detention slip, police were able to identify five of the teens involved. The city is now working with juvenile court and the teens’ parents to right the wrongs through restitution and community service.

“The parents seem very cooperative,” Snoqualmie Police Captain Steve McCulley told the Record. “They want to make sure the right thing is done, and that kids understand there are consequences for their actions.”

The police, McCulley said, would rather see the teens stay out of the jail system, and correct their behavior instead.

The graffiti arrest also gets the word out: “If you do this, there are going to be consequences for your actions.”

Local response

North Bend Police Chief Mark Toner wants to see a community response to graffiti—not just officially, but also by residents and business owners. He has considered an ordinance stressing prompt clean-up, but balks at putting all the responsibility on victims.

“It’s effective, but at the same time, it’s a double insult,” he said.

Toner would like to see a volunteer program in which graffiti can be reported and a quick-response team can quickly paint over it, free of charge, allowing the home- or property-owner time to do a better job.

Toner asks parents to check out their children’s notebooks.

“When you drive through town and you see a specific script, look at your kids’ books. See if they have the same script on it,” he said.

McCulley said parents should be vigilant, and know where their teens are and who they’re hanging out with.

When Pray, the North Bend parks worker, spots those stealthy teens ducking him at Torguson Park, he calls the cops.

“We always tell people, if they see something, they need to tell us,” McCulley said. “Sometimes, there’s a hesitancy to call 911. That’s how you reach police.”

North Bend Police: http://directory.kingcounty.gov/GroupDetail.asp?GroupID=30235

Snoqualmie Police: http://www.ci.snoqualmie.wa.us/Departments/PoliceDepartment/tabid/87/Default.aspx