Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Thursday, May 15, 2008
City, business owners get aggressive with graffiti
Debra Lash has painted the garage behind her Main Street building twice in the past year to cover up graffiti. She’s getting ready to paint it again after getting tagged over the weekend.
On Wednesday morning, she was in the alley with a can of Goof Off scrubbing blue spray paint off the 113-year-old bricks of the former YWCA that houses her Wedding Tree business.
It’s a routine she says has become more common in recent years.
 Deb Lash, owner of The Wedding Tree, scrubs graffiti off the wall of her building. Erik Daily |
At the opposite end of the alley, Deb Neitzel’s building has a variety of markings.
“We have black, white, blue and gold,” she said. Neitzel said she has been waiting for warm weather to paint because the building is a historic landmark and she can’t pressure wash or use chemicals.
Downtown business owners are frustrated by what they say is a growing amount of graffiti, which they are required to clean up. One is even offering a cash reward in hopes someone will finger the culprit.
Now the city has launched a new anti-graffiti plan that will require them to remove the graffiti even faster.
Bud Miyamoto doesn’t mince words about graffiti. The executive director of Downtown Mainstreet Inc. says it is “a serious crime” that makes a bad impression on visitors and makes it harder to attract new businesses.
“It’s a crime on the entire community,” he said.
Miyamoto said the problem has gotten worse in the past three years.
“It used to be in the alleys,” said city Planning Director Larry Kirch. “Now it’s showing up on the fronts of buildings. It’s showing up on Main Street and Third Street and Fourth Street.”
This week Kirch is sending downtown property owners an anti-graffiti brochure urging them to report and document all graffiti — and to remove it within 24 hours.
That’s one of the most effective deterrents to more graffiti, Kirch said.
Conventional wisdom says graffiti attracts graffiti. And prompt removal denies taggers the thrill of seeing their work displayed.
A city ordinance requires property owners to remove graffiti from their buildings; it’s up to building inspectors to determine a reasonable time. That’s generally been about a week.
The city plans to hold up its end of the deal by promptly removing graffiti on public property, Kirch said. Parking police will carry paint removal chemicals in their Jeeps and will be expected to stop and clean up tags on street signs, light poles and other city property.
Last year, the city applied for an anti-graffiti grant from Keep America Beautiful’s Graffiti Hurts program. It didn’t make the cut, but the preparation helped raise community awareness, said Scott Reber, the city’s grant writer.
Reber is applying again for the grant, though he acknowledges that La Crosse is an underdog because the problem isn’t as bad as places such as the Twin Cities and Milwaukee.
Catching the culprits
Police caught a suspected tagger Sunday morning after a citizen alerted an officer. Nicholas Dygert, 23, faces misdemeanor graffiti charges. He’s accused of painting on five buildings including Lash’s. Police say additional charges will come if they can match the paint Dygert was carrying to other buildings.
In the past 12 months, La Crosse police had 107 reports of graffiti, of which 37 resulted in arrests.
“It’s not kids,” Capt. Gary Uting said of the culprits. “A lot of the suspects we’re arresting are in their early 20s.”
Uting and others say that most of La Crosse’s graffiti is mischievous self-expression rather than gang-related.
Steve Harm isn’t waiting for police to catch whoever painted three elaborate tags on the walls of his building at Fourth and Pearl streets.
Harm, who runs the all-ages music venue The Warehouse, is offering $250 for information leading to the prosecution of the perpetrator. He covered up the tags, but not before posting pictures of them on his Web site, where he criticized them as “low-talent, first graders with paint type graffiti.”
Harm admits that he was trying to antagonize the taggers in hopes of luring them back to the scene of the crime.
“I can appreciate that it’s art,” he said. “But if I was a performance artist who specialized in smashing glass, I don’t think police would appreciate it if I walked down the street smashing store windows.”
Chris Hubbuch can be reached at at (608) 791-8217 or at chubbuch@lacrossetribune.com.
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