City of Chicago Suing Chicago Art Institute Graffiti Artists
Photo past of Alan Ket by Xolo Maridueña, courtesy www.supportket.org
Law enforcement agencies, judges and politicians effectually the country are stepping upwardly their battle confronting graffiti artists. Simply the crackdown may only have emboldened them.
In March 2009, a man identified past Pittsburgh Law as "HERT," the city'south second most-wanted graffiti artist, entered the Allegheny Canton Courthouse for an appearance stemming from a prior arrest.
But when he arrived, he was informed that law as well had warrants for his arrest on 69 misdemeanors and four felony counts of criminal mischief based on estimated amercement from vandalism caused by the 22-twelvemonth-old's alleged activities of spray-painting his tag on public and private buildings, railroad backdrop, and nearly a dozen neighborhoods in and around Pittsburgh'southward downtown corridor. HERT was then handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom.
TV cameras were there to capture the moment, and Detective Daniel Sullivan of Pittsburgh Police Bureau's Graffiti Task Force, fabricated certain the media knew the significance of the arrest.
"He was the number-ii tagger in the city, hitting more than 100 pieces of property, and that doesn't include outside boroughs," Sullivan told reporters, adding that HERT had acquired an estimated $212,000 in amercement to private and public belongings during his graffiti career.
The case of HERT, who is still pending trial, illustrates what some observers believe is an increasing crackdown on graffiti across the state. While, nationwide statistics on graffiti criminal offense practise not exist, the reallocation of police force department budgets and resources suggests that cities are increasingly using prosecutions as a weapon to end the practice. For instance, Graffiti Tracker, an Omaha, Nebraska-based company, which investigates graffiti crimes under contract with law enforcement agencies or sells them analysis software, is doing a thriving business concern. According to Timothy Kephart, Graffiti Tracker's CEO, the company has over $1 1000000 in contracts with police departments in 45 cities, towns and municipalities.
And more cities similar Pittsburgh have created "vandal squads" dedicated to capturing loftier-profile graffiti artists, similar to the force New York City instituted decades ago.
But the subtext of this battle is cultural.
Street Art
Graffiti artists and their defenders merits that what they do is not just art, but the manifestation of a rich, decades-old street culture. To opponents of course, it is but vandalism, punishable past an escalating level of fines, jail time or community service. The fines can vary, depending on whether information technology is prosecuted as a misdemeanor or felony–which in turns depends on where the case is being tried. In Pittsburgh, for example, amercement exceeding $v,000 are considered a felony, while in New York, only amercement less than $one,500 are prosecuted as misdemeanors.
The wide variations in penalisation, likewise as the different methods used to calculate damages and collect prove may be one reason that consequent statistics are difficult to come by. Yet 1 thing appears certain: graffiti artists are not simply unfazed past the forces arrayed confronting them; they seem to be energized.
"By our measures, (including) input from local and out-of-state police departments, graffiti law-breaking is increasing at a significant rate," admits Det. Sullivan, who says that enforcement has been complicated by the commercialization of the graffiti subculture and arguments that graffiti is a legitimate function of popular culture.
"Then many different types of people are involved in the world of graffiti," says Stacey Richman, a New York-based lawyer who has represented countless graffiti artists, such equally members of the TATS CRU, a group of Bronx (NY)-based artists who style themselves as "professional muralists who work in aerosol" and fifty-fifty have their ain web site . "Information technology is a very complex community, and historically graffiti serves a very important chatty message amongst people."
Co-ordinate to Richman, graffiti has often kept neighborhood youth away from drugs and gangs and focused, instead, on creativity. "It'south a positive outlet as compared to other options in the street for young people," she says.
Victimless Crime?
Taggers are often quick to claim, in their defense, that graffiti is a victimless crime. Only Lester G. Nauhaus, a judge in Pittsburgh's Allegheny County known for being tough on graffiti, disagrees strongly. "There are e'er victims," he argues. "The victims in these situations own the holding."
Nevertheless, the argument that property owners are victims remains a contentious i in graffiti civilization, primarily because information technology sets up what many view as a directly confrontation between the haves and have-nots in club.
"Wealthy building owners think that having something on the wall hurts their property values and makes people fearful," says Manhattan graffiti artist Alain Maridueña, who uses the tag KET. "(Merely) young people recall that writing on the wall is a form of expression; it's artistic, and it's cute."
Opponents are equally determined to put a stop to what they consider a threat to the quality of life in their communities. "Graffiti really cuts at the soul of a neighborhood," says Jenny Skrinjar, president of Lawrenceville United, a Pittsburgh-based customs group. "A neighborhood can't tolerate the trash and uncaring entreatment that [graffiti] brings."
Whatever the merits of the conflicting arguments, graffiti artists are well enlightened that, one time they are caught, they face a mounting body of water of legal troubles. In 2006, a Special Investigations Unit of the New York Police Department searched Maridueña'southward habitation. Police seized documents, computers, art supplies, and fifty-fifty historical photos that he was keeping for an upcoming book on the history of New York Urban center's graffiti move.
He pled guilty to the felony charges against him to avert a prison sentence. Equally a male parent, he didn't desire to lose any time with his children. He has over a year left on his court-ordered probation and will before long finish paying his restitution. Well-nigh damaging of all, nevertheless: he is now a bedevilled felon.
"It's a money game," charges Maridueña. "They wear you lot down until you run out of coin. And and then you lot got to have a shitty deal and do prison house time or get a permanent record. And then you get a criminal by their standards, and they can immediately toss you in jail if you e'er go out of line."
Hardening Stance
Recent convictions nationwide have shown a hardening of the criminal justice system's stance against graffiti artists. In December, Corpus Christi (Texas) Judge Marisela Saldaña sentenced xviii-twelvemonth-quondam Sebastian Perez to eight years in prison house on 3 counts of graffiti and i count of marijuana possession, giving Perez the maximum two-twelvemonth judgement for each charge. Under Texas law, both crimes are felonies. But due to a new land law prohibiting judges to "stack" consecutive sentences, Perez' sentence was reduced to two years.
Danielle Bremner, aka UTAH, has been arrested and sentenced multiple times in the past 2 years. In Apr 2009, Bremner was sentenced to half-dozen months at New York's Rikers Island facility and ordered to pay $x,000 in restitution to the city's Metropolitan Transit Authority. After her release from Rikers, she served another half-dozen months in a Boston prison for similar offenses and was released in January.
The most notable instance in recent years, nonetheless, is the July 2008 confidence of Daniel Montano (aka MF ONE), the graffitist sentenced to 2 ½ to 5 years in a Pennsylvania state penitentiary. The Pittsburgh Law Bureau'due south Graffiti Task Force estimated Montano acquired over $700,000 in damages to individual and public property. And when Montano is released from prison, he will owe $234,000 in restitution and exist expected to fulfill 2,500 hours of community service.
But not anybody believes prison sentences are the answer to this problem.
"Locking upwardly graffiti writers costs taxpayer money and doesn't remove the graffiti that bothered people to begin with," says Caleb Neelon, co-author of the forthcoming volume A History of American Graffiti (HarperCollins). "The sensation of vengeance may feel good to some, but it's an expensive rush."
Neelon raises an of import signal. Belongings impairment caused by graffiti writers is often overshadowed by the price of incarceration.
Withal, Pittsburgh Judge Nauhaus argues that the cost is defensible when dealing with echo offenders. "Having a vandal perform customs service is just punishment for the first or second offense," says Nauhaus. "But when he says 'spiral you' to order, I (accept) no sympathy. We alive in a structured gild. And if somebody doesn't want to be part of the structured guild, you lot take them out."
For graffiti artists beyond the land, and their defenders, that doesn't sound encouraging.
"People fail to realize that the person [they read about] in the newspaper is an individual and cannot be held responsible for all the graffiti in the metropolis," says a graffiti artist from a major metropolitan expanse who spoke with TCR on condition that his name non exist used, citing the landslide of public outrage that oftentimes follows the abort of a prolific tagger. "It'southward not jail that worries me, it'southward being bedevilled of a felony and having that limit my futurity, especially for something every bit insignificant as applying paint to walls without permission."
Matthew Newton is an independent journalist. He is a regular guest columnist for the Practical Research Eye'due south RaceWire blog and a contributing editor at Truthful/Slant.com, where he writes the column Annals of Americus .
Photograph by of Alan Ket past Xolo Maridueña, courtesy www.supportket.org
Source: https://thecrimereport.org/2010/02/22/art-crime-graffiti-wars/