Another dumb fucking New York City pig in handcuffs!
Via: NYTimes
Archive for the ‘Dumb Shit’ Category
I love it when this happens to them!
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010Judge Marisela Saldaña
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
This is Judge Marisela Saldaña and she giving out 8 years sentences to graffiti writers.
Classical music deters graffiti artists in subways
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009Can classical music deter graffiti artists and prevent youth gathering in the subways?
The Council of Dartford, Kent, England has decided to play classical music in subways and pedestrian tunnels. For now, the speakers primarily play music of Gustav Mahler, but they plan to add Mozart and Handel as well.
According to the Telegraph, Jeremy Kite, Dartford Council leader calls this experiment a success. “People told us they feel safer and they are enjoying the music.” Subways in Blackburn and Burney have also experienced a reduction of graffitti and youth gatherings.
Given the success of subway classical music in Kent, would such an experiment work in New York City? Would passerbys be willing to exchange rap for Ravel, Tupac for Tchaikovsky, Eminem for Elgar? It would be quite interesting to see how subway patrons at 149th St. Grand Concourse, Hunts Point, or Woodlawn respond to Mahler and Mozart. Via:www.examiner.com
More Myspace Stupidity!
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009MySpace Images Lead To Graffiti Suspect
LONDONDERRY, N.H. — A Londonderry High School student is facing graffiti-related charges after police said they found evidence of graffiti on his MySpace.com page.
Police said they began investigating graffiti at Londonderry Skate Park off Sargent Road in May. Investigators said the style of the graffiti was similar to other incidents reported throughout the past year.A confidential source led the school resource officer at Londonderry High School to Tyler Leblanc, 17, police said. Leblanc’s MySpace.com page included a photo album that featured graffiti found at the skate park and other drawings that appeared identical to those found at other places around town, police said.A search warrant was obtained, and police said they found paint markers, cans of spray paint, notebooks and two marijuana pipes in Leblanc’s bedroom.Leblanc was charged with 25 misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief, one felony count of criminal mischief and one count of possession of a controlled drug.
Via:www.wmur.com
Another Queens Ny Graffiti Crack Down – All The Other Crack Downs They Were Just Playing This Time They Mean business!! – LOL
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Manuel Morocho opened his eatery, Manolo’s Mexican Restaurant, just five months ago but it has already been defaced with black spray paint. The conscientious Sunnyside business owner planned to clean up the graffiti, but Mayor Bloomberg beat him to it.
“First I was thinking, maybe it’s a joke, but now I realize that it is for real,” Morocho said.
In fact, Bloomberg took many business owners by surprise when he visited Sunnyside on Thursday to announce ways the city will make its graffiti removal program even better.
“Graffiti is a pernicious and pervasive quality of life problem but our city agencies have made great strides in removing it from our neighborhoods,” he said. “We’re cleaning more graffiti than ever before and working with the City Council, we are going to introduce legislation to make it easier and more efficient to keep doing that.”
Currently, property owners who want graffiti removed have to sign a waiver. The new legislation will give the city authority to automatically remove graffiti unless the property owner says otherwise.
After Bloomberg finished discussing the changes, a crew from the city’s Graffiti Free NYC team got to work on cleaning Manolo’s Mexican Restaurant.
“The graffiti makes my restaurant look bad because people think this is a bad neighborhood,” Morocho said. “But now that Mayor Bloomberg has come here with this program, it’s going to help the community and it’s going to help my restaurant.”
Alyssa Bonilla of the Sunnyside Shines Business Improvement District said graffiti has increasingly become a problem in the community and business owners have frequently come to her with concerns. She believes Bloomberg’s plan is a step in the right direction.
“To really keep graffiti at bay, you have to take away the graffiti writer’s incentive and their incentive is to see their name up in lights, so to speak,” she explained. “The best way to tackle it, is to remove the graffiti, to paint over it or wash it off within 24 hours and then it loses it’s thrill because eventually the writer will get tired.”
Since it was initially created in 2007, the city’s Graffiti Free NYC program has removed more than 170 million square feet of graffiti from buildings throughout the city free of charge. By extending the cleanup season, increasing the number of graffiti power wash trucks, and creating a Street Condition Observation Unit to quickly identify and report defaced property, the city has been able to increase the program’s effectiveness.
“Nothing makes a good neighborhood look worse than graffiti everywhere,” said City Councilman, Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside). “It is a sign to criminals and to citizens that we are out of control, that we can’t even stop the small crimes. It begs the question, if we can’t take care of graffiti than what can we do right?”
Gioia commended the mayor for, “understanding that small bad things can cause a ripple effect that causes a terrible state in our city.”
Bloomberg encourages all New Yorkers to promptly report graffiti to 311 and invites them to join his Mayor’s paint program, which provides volunteer groups with supplies so that they can remove graffiti in their own neighborhoods.
Mayor on graffiti vandals: Off with their heads
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009Off with their heads: That’s what Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is saying after vandals leave their mark on one of the city’s most famous landmarks.
Tuesday, clean-up crews were out at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign trying to remove graffiti.
But as News 3′s Denise Rosch explains, it’s not as easy as originally hoped.
It’s hard to put a price tag on exposure after millions of people have stopped for a picture at our city’s favorite sign. But this week, there’s a little something in the way: graffiti.
And it’s a topic that has our mayor seeing red.
“I’m disappointed. I’m angry. I’m tired of it, I really am,” says Mayor Oscar Goodman. “I think the perpetrator of this might think it’s a joke. I don’t think it’s a joke.”
Tuesday, clean-up crews were out taking care of the problem after the scribbled letters first showed up Sunday night. They appear to be someone’s initials, maybe, painted on for the world to see.
Now, a reward is being offered and the mayor is hoping for a public punishment.
“Well, I’ve said cut off their head. That’s good for openers,” Goodman continues. “But the truth of the matter is I’d like to see a stockade downtown. Put this jerk’s head in it and let everybody put a little bit of paint on the nose.”
When it comes to clean up, it will take more than a soapy rag and water; the sign is old and the paint has seeped in. Crews say it will be quite a process.
“We have a bleaching agent we use. With the sun and heat, after about three days, it should bleach (the paint) out,” says Mike Kightlinger, American Graffiti.
But this leaves many wondering how a repeat performance can be stopped. According to County Public Works, talk of surveillance cameras is simply a rumor.
And Goodman is no fan either.
“I don’t want to live in a penned society with fences around me, cameras in my face.”
Meaning, it could be left up to our visitors to police themselves and decide whether a snapshot of graffiti is the souvenir they want from Las Vegas.
The exact cost of the clean-up is still being tallied, but graffiti removal on public and private property costs taxpayers about $30 million per year in Clark County.
To fight graffiti, L.A. Council may restrict spraypaint sales
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
In its continuing effort to reduce graffiti, the Los Angeles City Council is considering expanding restrictions on the sale of aerosol spraypaint cans and other materials to people under 21.
At the request of Councilmen Dennis Zine, Greig Smith and Eric Garcetti, the public safety committee today asked city lawyers to work on a possible ordinance that would outlaw sales to anyone under 21, after seeking recommendations from the Los Angeles Police Department and the city’s legislative analysts.
“We need to make it as tough as possible if we’re going to get serious on the eradication of graffiti in the city of Los Angeles. Otherwise it’s cosmetic, it does no good and people continually look at us to say ‘What are you doing to fix this problem that is terrorizing neighborhoods?’ ” Zine said Monday during the public safety committee meeting.
Lawyers said there is already a state law prohibiting the sale of spraypaint cans and etching cream to those under 18. Zine said he hoped the council would raise that age limit to 21, and consider other options such as requiring spraypaint purchasers to show identification or making it a crime for a minor to carry spray paint. The city already requires retailers to keep the paint cans in a locked container.
“As we can see by driving down any freeway,” Zine said, “the current laws aren’t working. They are absolutely being ignored and the consequences aren’t severe enough to have an impact.”
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has signed a series of laws aimed at reducing graffiti. The city banned the sale of spraypaint cans, etching acids and indelible markers to persons under 21 in 2007 — an expansion of an earlier law that restricted sales of graffiti instruments to those under 18. In 2005, the New York City Council also began requiring property owners with six or more units to remove graffiti from their property within 60 days of receiving notice from the city or face a penalty of up to $300.
Chicago passed a ban on the sale of spraypaint cans and indelible markers within city limits in 1992. Shortly after, the National Paint & Coatings Assn. filed a lawsuit challenging the law and was joined by a group of paint retailers and other businesses.
A federal judge overturned Chicago’s spraypaint ban in 1993, but the city appealed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the restriction to be constitutional. The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, which denied the request for appeal in March of 1995. The ban went into effect in April of 1995 after a one-month grace period for retailers to adjust.
– Maeve Reston at L.A. City Hall
Vandals Sully an Ode to East Harlem
Saturday, June 27th, 2009
ART UNDER ATTACK A four-story mural at 104th Street and Lexington Avenue from the 1970s features real-life residents. This month, graffiti vandals struck.
The walls of East Harlem can speak. Dozens of colorful murals line the narrow streets and wide avenues, celebrating pleneros and poets, rumberos and revolutionaries. Defying gentrification, their dazzling colors brighten sun-starved stretches and declare that the neighborhood’s residents refuse to budge.
“We have a special flavor in our community because of our murals,” said Carmen Vasquez, a longtime resident. “Our history and culture is there. They’re a way of saying who we are and where we’re going. Everything has a meaning.”
Lamentably so. Ms. Vasquez was dressed in black, the reason for her mourning evident behind her — huge bubble letters, recklessly slathered across the “The Spirit of East Harlem,” a four-story landmark by Hank Prussing that has graced the southeast corner of East 104th Street and Lexington Avenue since 1978.
Via:NYTimes
Taking boy to court in graffiti case proves costly
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
He’s 9 years old and facing the long and astonishingly well-funded arm of the law. So far, we’ve sent the boy to a psychiatrist and to a psychologist and next month, we’ll pay for him to see another shrink.
If she agrees that the boy might – might – be made competent to stand trial, we’ll spend six months teaching the kid about the court system so that we can make him pay his debt to society.
Or, we could just make him pay his debt to society.
Actually, we can’t do the latter. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has a policy against such things.
Fortunately, money is apparently no object in this county – pay no attention to that $32 million hole in the budget – and so we are spending thousands to bring this 9-year-old to justice. And, apparently, others like him.
“I see this all the time,” said Robert Dodell, Matthew’s taxpayer-supplied attorney. “Do I think it’s a waste of money? Yeah.”
A spokesman for the County Attorney’s Office says it’s rethinking the policy.
Matthew is a fourth-grader in El Mirage, a soft-spoken kid who loves basketball and skateboarding. A kid who had never been in any trouble until October, when he and three friends decided to deface the neighborhood park with graffiti. Damage estimate: $200.
A few days later, he was called to the principal’s office during math. Waiting for him was an El Mirage police officer, who read him his rights and released him to his parents after he admitted to using a Sharpie to write his initials and one other thing – police say it was an obscenity, Matthew says it was “Sk8″ – on the playground.
Matthew would face his day in court, but first he would face his parents, Christine and Paul, who were none too pleased with their son. “We grounded him,” Paul said. “He wasn’t allowed to play basketball, video games or anything like that for a couple of weeks. What he did was wrong, and he knew what he did was wrong.”
In December, Matthew was summoned to juvenile court, where his parents expected that he would admit his wrongdoing and be ordered to clean up the park. They were all for that.
But attorney Dodell, after talking to Matthew, felt the boy wasn’t competent to stand trial given his age, and so Judge Janelle McEachern ordered a mental-competency evaluation.
Apparently, Dodell was right because the two doctors agreed that the boy doesn’t understand enough about his rights and such to stand trial.
One of the two, however, felt that he could be “restored” to competency – taught enough about court proceedings to face the judge.
The result: Matthew has been ordered to see a third doctor next month – a “tiebreaker.” If she agrees that he can be made competent, we’ll be sending a “restoration specialist” to his school for up to six months, to tutor him about the system.
Dodell says it’s a complete waste of money, but a necessary one. The courts have no choice but to do a full-blown mental-competency exam – the same one given to the St. Johns kid accused of two murders – because the County Attorney’s Office has a policy against putting kids like this into a diversion program.
“In a diversion program, it would probably be some community-service hours, pay for it, and maybe write an essay or attend class on why this is terrible for the community,” Dodell said.
In other words, the same punishment that any judge would likely order, just minus the thousands in psychiatric, legal and “restoration” bills.
Mike Scerbo, spokesman for the County Attorney’s Office, said that the no-diversion policy for graffiti has been in effect since 1995. On Thursday, he defended the policy, noting that the act of writing graffiti is a big problem and adding that it wasn’t the prosecutor’s call to order mental exams.
“It’s the judge’s discretion as to how to deal with the case,” he said. On Friday, Scerbo told me the office is developing a diversion program for such cases.
It probably won’t come soon enough for Matthew, who on April 16 will meet with yet another psychiatrist. No worries. Just put it on our already overburdened tab.
We’re good for it.
We are good for it, aren’t we?
Via:www.azcentral.com
Criminalizing spray paint doesn’t fix graffiti
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009We do not believe graffiti is art. We’ve observed that most graffiti is vandalism, defacement that is a blight on neighborhoods, schools, railroads and other property. The expense of cleaning it up — often multiple times — is borne by taxpayers and property owners and is appalling.However, the bill that’s been approved by a state House committee is an absurd effort to address the issue.
The House Judicial Committee voted 7-1 that a “minor in possession of spray paint” could result in 30 days in jail and a $500 fine, Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services reported in the Star. The same penalty would apply to those with “etching tools or solutions.”
The proposal includes exceptions for minors armed with spray paint who are legitimately on private property or under adult supervision or doing a job.
Fischer reported that the sponsor, Rep. Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, said HB 2138 is designed to give police throughout the state a new way to combat graffiti.
Campbell compared the measure to state laws restricting juveniles’ possession of alcohol and guns.
“I believe when we leave too much discretion to (police) officers, the majority of officers are going to be fine,” Rep. Bill Konopnicki, R-Safford, told Fischer. “But you have some that are going to abuse the power to do that.”
Campbell predicted that the exceptions would prevent over-zealous law enforcement and added, “I don’t see many other cases when a youth needs to be walking through a park, walking down the street, whatever it may be, with a spray paint can in a back pocket, an etching solution in their back pocket.”
Rep. Cecil Ash, R-Mesa, was unconvinced. “There’s nothing inherently bad about these materials,” he told Fischer.
We agree. For instance, many find annoying skateboarders who skate in parking lots or on public streets — and they sometimes damage railings, benches and other props they use in their tricks. However, outlawing the skateboard and sending its owner to jail isn’t the answer.
The solution to graffiti is not to criminalize minors’ possession of spray paint or etching materials across the state and impose jail time and large fines. This legislative measure does nothing to address the complex root causes of graffiti, which include youths lacking outlets to express their emotions and the more serious and frightening marking of gang territories.
Graffiti is a local problem and the solutions to taggers gone wild are best identified in the community where they live, not at the statehouse.
[www.azstarnet.com]