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Published on 05/26/1999 All articles from this issue

Cities launch anti-graffiti program: 'Tag You Lose'

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

The 15 cities in Santa Clara County have joined together to launch a full, frontal attack on graffiti, called "Tag You Lose."

The Santa Clara County Cities Association, in conjunction with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's office, the juvenile courts and the juvenile probation department, unveiled their program on Tuesday.

"It's not a huge issue in Los Altos, but people don't connect that it is a crime," said Los Altos City Councilwoman Kris Casto.

"It costs money for governments and cities to clean it up," she said.

San Jose City Councilwoman Pat Dando, who is spearheading the project, said that "all 15 cities in the county approved it within four weeks," including Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. "That was a first," Dando said, to have such quick, unqualified approval from all the cities.

The goal of the campaign is education, organizers said. The slogan, "Tag You Lose," is a reminder that taggers may lose their driver's license, time, money and freedom.

Taggers who are caught may lose their driver's license for a year. If they're not yet driving, they'll have to wait an extra year before they may even apply for a license, said Shane Sommers, assistant to Dando.

As part of punishment for taggers, they will be assigned a specific geographic area to keep clean for up to a year. This means not just cleaning up their own tagging, but keeping an area clean, officials said.

In addition, the program will focus on making parents and juveniles aware of other consequences, including 66 hours of community service for a first offense, as well as restitution.

"The goal is to make young people think twice about committing an act of vandalism in the first place," a spokesman for the program said.

In Los Altos, incidents of graffiti have increased dramatically in the past year, according to police reports. Citizens have reported tagging on stop signs, at schools and on city buildings. The city's response is to paint over it immediately.

In San Jose, the city spent $2 million last year on graffiti abatement, just "to paint it out," Dando said.

In Los Altos, developers of the Tree Farm project have spent thousands of dollars having graffiti repeatedly painted off the white stucco walls that surround three sides of their site on El Camino Real.

"Customers, visitors and investors are less likely to spend financial resources in a neighborhood or shopping district that is blighted with graffiti," according to the Santa Clara County Cities Association literature.

Casto said, "Graffiti affects our quality of life here."