Española Police and the city’s graffiti officer said they are making headway in identifying repeat graffiti offenders, but lenient sentencing in the juvenile justice system is stymieing their efforts.
“We’re starting, along with the schools and our graffiti officer, to get tagger names and matching them with kids’ real names,” Española Police officer Danny Pacheco said. “We wait until we have eight, 10 tags, and when we know its them, we go up to the school and pick them up.”
Last month, for example, Pacheco and graffiti officer Jaime Martinez apprehended Abel DeVargas, an Española Valley High School student who allegedly paints under the tag names “Gage” and “SBK.”
Pacheco wrote in a police report that Martinez had identified DeVargas from “the graffity (sic) that Abel had done before.” Martinez had collected photos of seven similar tags throughout Española, including one at the old La Cocina Restaurant, on a wall on Calle del Pajarito and several more on Fairview Lane and on Calle Don Diego.
Española Police have responded to 17 graffiti incidents so far this year, according to police reports. Of those, six reports identify a suspect.
Armando Rodriguez, until recently a teen court coordinator for the Española Juvenile Parole and Probation Office and now legal assistant for the city, pointed to the case of Aaron Soto, a Victory Faith Academy student and allegedly a tagger who goes by “Detso,” apprehended late last year.
“With him we waited and waited, basically gave him enough rope to hang himself,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said he does not know what happened to Detso’s case after it was referred to the Juvenile Office, but he has not seen any new tags by Detso since. Juvenile court records are confidential under state law.
Pacheco expressed frustration at the Office, saying police often refer graffiti cases there, only to see teens get “cut loose” with little or no punishment.
Office spokeswoman Romaine Serna cited a statewide policy that requires the Office to refer all graffiti cases to the District Attorney’s office, which decides on a case-by-case basis whether to prosecute individual cases. What happens after that is out of the Office’s hands, she said.
Of the average 500 juvenile cases the Juvenile Office’s Española branch receives each year, 25 to 50 are graffiti-related, Serna said. She said statistics are not available on the outcome of those cases. The District Attorney’s office did not return calls for comment.
By matching a tagger to multiple incidents, police can charge the youth with a felony, making it difficult for the District Attorney’s office to ignore the charges, Pacheco said.
Martinez said the most common punishment for taggers is community service — specifically, working with Martinez to clean up graffiti around town. He said it is often effective.
“They hate it,” Martinez said.
But both Martinez and Pacheco called for more stringent city ordinances to address graffiti.
A 2002 ordinance gave property owners 48 hours to clean up graffiti on their premises, otherwise the graffiti was considered a nuisance and the city was entitled to clean up the vandalism. The same ordinance made parents responsible for the damage.
The city repealed that ordinance in 2006 and replaced it with another in which the city must inform the property owner within five days that he or she “should” remove the graffiti, but prescribes no penalties for property owners who do not comply. The newer ordinance only allows the city to paint over graffiti on private property at the owner’s request, and no longer holds liable the parents of taggers.
Pacheco said he would like the city to draft an ordinance once more holding parents financially responsible for their children’s graffiti damage.
“The kids are out at three, four in the morning, tagging,” Pacheco said. “Where’s the parents?”
And Martinez said he is preparing a draft ordinance to present to the City Council that would force stores to keep spray paint under lock and key next to the cash register and another once more requiring home and business owners to report graffiti on their property within 48 hours.
A current ordinance requires graffiti reporting within five days. When graffiti is reported, police take a report and Martinez brings community service workers to clean up the graffiti.
To report graffiti on a property, call Martinez at 747-6091. To report graffiti in progress, call Española Police at 753-5555.