City Council tags graffiti as a growing concern

You know I was on the train to Texas last month when I was looking at examples of the city's sometimes winning and sometimes losing battle with grafitti. Then I see this article in the Sun-Times just now. It's apparently a citywide problem worth confronting and they are discussing it in the city council...

Chicago will be hit with 170,000 incidents of graffiti vandalism in 2007 -- including "acid etching" of windows -- and juvenile arrests will nearly double, aldermen were told Monday.

In spite of those alarming statistics, the City Council's Police Committee put the brakes on Mayor Daley's plan to crack the whip against the parents of graffiti vandals.

To break the cycle of destruction that recently caused $3,000 in damage to City Hall, Daley wants to hit parents where it hurts -- in the wallet -- with fines as high as $750 or $3,000 worth of restitution, whichever is greater. Administrative hearings officers would have no discretion to lower the new fines.

Aldermen say that's too steep for poor families and for the growing number of grandparents struggling to raise their children's children.

"So the little grandmother who's on a fixed income already or no income. She's down there on a walker on oxygen. Then we tell her that she's got to pay $500 and she don't have $50," said Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th), who held the mayor's ordinance in committee to press his demand that the penalties be softened.

Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) said she too is "worried about the grandmother taking care of seven grandchildren because dad is in the penitentiary and mom is someplace -- they don't know where she is."

Hey what's this acid etching they're referring to? Well this article doesn't say but I know one thing, once the window is hit, the damage must be permanent...

"Kids are starting to starting to really, really do acid etching. If you go up and down Milwaukee Avenue, you're going to see it all over," said Bob Richardson, deputy commissioner of street operations for the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation.

"We have no way of removing acid etching. You hit a window like Macy's and it's going to cost about $4,000" to remove the glass.

Ald. Vi Daley (43rd) said there's "a lot of etching up and down Clark Street" in her north lakefront ward.

"It's just been really difficult. Like you said, there's not much you can do other than replace glass, which ends up being very expensive," Daley said.

Now back to the issue of prosecution I can go for this. If the folks can't pay for it, then make these young people clean it back up. Works for me...

"Is someone from municipal prosecutions going to be standing there saying, 'This young person has never been in trouble before. We recommend to the hearing officer that they get community service as opposed to making this lady over here pay $500 that she doesn't have and she's not going to pay.' Or are we just going to say, 'Everybody who comes in the door [must pay] $500,' " Lyle said.

Thomas Dombai, chief of municipal prosecutions for the city's Law Department, argued that community service is not enough to deter some graffiti vandals. They "go back and tag again," he said.

Currently, parents are held financially accountable only if there's a guilty verdict at a criminal trial, which rarely happens. Prosecutors routinely settle for community service.

Well hopefully on the tracks along Archer Avenue heading out of the city or indeed on any rail line or street and what not perhaps the first greeting upon entering the city should now be grafitti.