N.D.G. war monument defaced

[jesseps]

Chalk it up as a victory for the anti-graffiti movement.

 

Brangwyn Jones went to Notre Dame de Grâce park Saturday night to attend an Urban Arts festival organized by Prévention N.D.G., a community organization trying to stamp out unsightly graffiti in the West End neighbourhood.

 

The group had set up several legal "graffiti walls" to allow young artists to showcase their work and to explain to taggers that there is more to graffiti than defacing property with spray paint.

 

Shortly after 5 p.m., Jones watched a teenage boy approach one of the walls and spray-paint the name "Blaze" on a plywood wall. An alarm bell went off in Jones's head.

 

He had seen that tag before - in the very same park.

 

It had been several weeks earlier, after a vandal had tagged the name Blaze on the cenotaph, the war memorial that stands in the park near the corner of Girouard Ave. and Sherbrooke St. Jones, a soldier in the Canadian Forces, was one of a number of N.D.G. residents outraged by the senseless act of vandalism.

 

"I couldn't believe that he tagged his name in front of me," Jones recalled of Saturday's incident.

 

The 36-year-old soldier wasn't about to let the vandal off the hook.

 

He brought the teen to the attention of the event's organizers and then called Montreal police.

 

He decided not to approach the teenager himself in case the boy decided to flee.

 

"I didn't want to have to run after him," Jones said.

 

When police officers arrived, they spoke to the teen, took down his information and took pictures of the tag.

 

Police officers told Jones they would investigate.

 

After the incident on Saturday night, Jones walked down Sherbrooke and said he took 23 pictures of the tag Blaze spray-painted in various places. He plans to send them to the police to help with the investigation.

 

As part of a campaign to stamp out graffiti in the Côte des Neiges-Notre Dame de Grâce borough, borough officials announced last month that they will begin invoicing vandals for the cleanup costs of removing their graffiti.

 

Montreal police have been keeping a registry that lists all graffiti-related infractions and can link a graffiti vandal to several tags. The cleaning costs will be added up and a bill will be sent to the offender. If the offender is a minor, the bill will be sent to the parents.

 

Jones said graffiti is rampant in his neighbourhood.

 

"There is tagging of mailboxes and every lamppost on the road," he said.

 

City councillor Susan Clarke is in charge of the anti-graffiti portfolio in the borough. The invoicing process should help reduce the costs of graffiti removal, which was about $564,000 in 2009, she said.

 

In 2009, more than 19,000 square metres of graffiti were removed from the borough and 11 artistic murals created.

 

Clarke said residents should call 911 if they witness someone tagging property.

 

Jones said he hopes the new policy will give police and borough officials more clout in the fight against senseless tagging.

 

"Hopefully, he will have to pay for all the stuff he has done."

 

(Courtesy of The Montreal Gazette)

Modifié 6 juillet 2010 par jesseps

[JFrosty]

What the hell? Alors ils essaient d'encourager les jeunes graffiteurs à faire leurs graffitis sur des places qui sont destinées à ça avec de la sensibilisation, et lorsqu'ils viennent le faire, on les pogne et on les dénonce à la police?

 

C'est quoi, un piège? Certainement pas comme ça qu'on va les encourager à arrêter!

[Cataclaw]

I don't think this is meant to be a trap at all. Unfortunately for Mr. Blaze, in his particular case, it worked out as so.

 

And too bad for him. I hope he/his parents pay up for the damage they've done. Maybe the guy will learn a lesson too.

[JFrosty]

I don't think this is meant to be a trap at all. Unfortunately for Mr. Blaze, in his particular case, it worked out as so.

 

And too bad for him. I hope he/his parents pay up for the damage they've done. Maybe the guy will learn a lesson too.

 

And how will that bring the graffti artists/taggers to leave the other walls alone? Logically, if they set up legal walls, they could pretty much arrest every single person that will show up there.

 

If they show up with the will to become legal, you should at least promise them that they won't get caught in something like that.

[Cataclaw]

The idea is to have legal places so that Graffiti artists/taggers will leave other walls alone.

 

I don't think that people will generally be arrested at these legal walls, since the whole idea is to set up a legal place to do it.

 

In the case of Blaze, i think it's an exception since the guy vandalized an esteemed public monument, which is much more severe than just tagging an old wooden fence in some derelict part of town.

 

It's like if you created an area where it was legal to smoke weed. Some drug lord responsible for 10,000 deaths shows up to smoke some weed, and you catch him. A trap? Yes and no. The intent of the area is not to deceive crooks and trap them, but in this one exceptional case, it worked out like that, and for the better!

 

But i understand what you're saying, and i agree. If the idea is to have a legal place, we can't start arresting everybody on suspicion of having tagged elsewhere. (Unless it's a major thing, like the monument, which i think is a fair exception.) People have to feel "safe" at these public Graffiti walls so that they'll do their business there and not on public property.

Modifié 6 juillet 2010 par Cataclaw

[Cyrus]

And how will that bring the graffti artists/taggers to leave the other walls alone? Logically, if they set up legal walls, they could pretty much arrest every single person that will show up there.

 

If they show up with the will to become legal, you should at least promise them that they won't get caught in something like that.

 

Come on, they won't get caught... unless they are really really stupid