City Attorney's Office to seek anti-tagging injunction
The City Attorney's Office announced Tuesday that that its personnel are working on an anti-graffiti injunction that would be similar to gang injunctions.
The office reports that Jolena Grider, senior deputy city attorney, will be in charge of the program. She said in a press release that the injunction would prohibit known taggers from associating with graffiti crews and from being in certain "target areas" in San Bernardino.
The announcement follows Mayor Pat Morris' demand for a city ordinance that would put taggers' parents on the hook for financial penalties. Morris is running for reelection against Grider's boss, City Attorney James F. Penman.
The election is Nov. 3. Contractor Rick Avila is also running for mayor.
SB Now readers are free to come to their own conclusions as to whether the sudden interest in anti-tagging initiatives has anything to do with the upcoming election.
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Andrew Edwards. E-mail Andrew here.
It's not a new idea at all. He's been offhandedly agreeing with others and talking about this for a long time. The upcoming election may have something to do with it, but it shouldn't matter because it's a good idea. Of course, there should be some very specific guidelines in this idea, but it certainly is a good idea. Instead of criminalizing these kids, we need to make their parents do their jobs. God knows what he's doing when he puts a family together. Nobody is a perfect parent and laws like this help better parent-teen relationships.
I have seen situations where parents couldn't do jack squat with their troubled teens until they had a financial reason to fix the problem and it worked. The troubled teen got straightened out. Ignoring (riding it out during the teen years) your hormonal, surly teenager is just like speaking baby-talk to your baby: it's okay once in a while, but if you do it too much, they'll never speak anything but baby-talk. If parents are forced to do a better job with laws like this, teens will have a better shot at becoming well-adjusted, productive adult members of society. Plus, our city will have less art on the walls.
Until the corrective action becomes a deterrent, an attention getter, nothing will change. Today the corrective actions are nothing more than an inconvenience. The vandal if under 18 and his parents MUST be accountable and punishable. If the vandal is over 18, then he pays the price and each time he is caught it is 100% greater than the last time he was caught. Fines, lock ups, long term unpleasant community service, tracking devices, all work and are effective if used aggressively. The PD needs to be staffed at levels where they can make a noticeable difference. The City residents must want to effectively deal with graffiti before this problem will be corrected. Parents MUST deal with their kids, neighbors must turn in what they see or know. The community MUST stop and say ENOUGH and then take the measures to make it stop. Then, and only then will it stop because today, only band-aids are being applied to this City wide proble.