City Council: Graffiti a Serious Problem
Vandals tagged this white fence on Spring Street with graffiti.Â
– Allison Goldsberry
It mars a sign at Morrison Park, covers a van in a convenience store parking lot, and is scrawled across a white fence on Spring Street.
It seems graffiti is appearing more and more across the city, and the City Council is fed up.
“It’s something we do not want in the city,” said City Council Vice-President Breanna Lungo-Koehn at the Council’s Tuesday night meeting.
Lungo-Koehn sponsored a resolution seeking help from the Middlesex Sheriff’s “graffiti truck” and a report from the Medford Police on the issue.
One resident said there is so much graffiti in the city it is at the point of discouraging potential home-buyers.
Suzanne Higgins, a North Medford resident, said she has seen graffiti all over the city, particularly along Spring Street.
Higgins, whose own home was tagged by graffiti last year, urged the city to take action and clean up the mess.
“Because leaving it, we’re telling these vandals we’re going to tolerate it,” said Higgins.
City Councilor Paul Camuso said he spoke to Mayor Michael McGlynn about the issue and that the mayor is planning on talking to Middlesex Sheriff Jim DiPaola and the Department of Public Works to coordinate clean-up efforts.
Camuso said residents should contact the DPW when they see graffiti so the department can keep a list of places to clean up. The DPW can be reached at 781-393-2417.
According to Camuso, a resident was nabbed several years ago for tagging and was given a harsh penalty- several years in prison. Camuso said residents should be vigilant in helping police catch the vandals.
Camuso also encouraged business owners to clean up their properties after they’ve been tagged, as it is not the city’s responsibility to clean up private property.
City Councilor Robert Maiocco said the city does not have an ordinance specifically addressing graffiti, so he requested that the city solicitor and police chief put something together that spells out maximum penalties for tagging.
With an Eye on Stolen Goods, Council Wants to Regulate Second-hand Items
According to City Councilor Michael Marks, housebreaks have increased in Medford over the past several years. Items stolen from homes often end up in pawn shops and second-hand stores, and they are sometimes sold long before police can get to them.
Councilors Marks and Camuso are working with the police to regulate the sale of second-hand items in the city so stolen items can’t be sold before law enforcement or the rightful owners can get a hold of them.
The Councilors say communities like Malden, Everett, and Somerville have strict regulations, and they would like similar laws that will make it easier to track stolen items before they are sold.
“We need to give the police department the tools to do their job,” said Camuso.
According to Camuso, a Medford store recently had several trucks broken into and the stolen items were sold the same day at a pawn shop on Boston Avenue. The new law would seek to prevent that from happening by requiring digital pictures of all second-hand items and preventing their sale for thirty days.
The next regularly scheduled Council meeting is Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 7PM at City Hall.
Medford Hillside’s been suffering from graffiti for several years now, because DPW does a half-hearted job cleaning up some of it once a year (at most) instead of going after it immediately. When graffiti is removed immediately, the taggers give up. When graffiti is ignored, more and more appears.
We’ve given up on calling 911 when we see a problem happening because the dispatcher is so nasty (cursing, yelling, etc.). Until the police and DPW start to actually care about the problem, we’re going to be stuck with it.
Keep graffiti where it belongs, in Somerville.
The statement that graffiti is out of control in Medford is not relevant. Graffiti is a form of self expression and it should not be ignored. There are so many different levels of Graffiti that I couldn’t sit here and voice them all nor do want to bother getting into in online. There is one major fact that needs to be addressed and understood with Graffiti. It has been always been here. From the days of old and will be here well into are future. As long a the human species will live there will be Graffiti in some form or another. You can’t stop it and I personally wouldn’t want to. If I owned a building with a wall big enough for a Graffiti mural on it, I would let who ever wanted to paint is go at it. To live in a society where the people can’t express them self’s is absurd.
The tagging in the pictures of the article is obviously JUNK. By Junk I mean, the person that did it don’t know what there doing. Now I want to say that I don’t feel its right for anyone to every TAG A PERSONS PERSONL PROPUTY nor do I think its right for TAGGERS to tag all over everything in site. But with that said. I could care less if its on the high ways and underpass’s, as long at its not on the signs. Who cares if its on the train tracks on the backs of buildings or in tunnels that frankly no one would see other then the people doing it, or people like them. If its not actually harming anything of anyone, then why bother. There is something that needs to be done about GRAFFITI. It need to be embraced and understood I am urging property owners that have walls to let some one paint then with a graffiti style mural. You would be very surprised at how amazing those look and how much nicer a wall can look after its been moralized. I seem so many walls around Medford that look bad. Chipping paint and JUNK graffiti all over the place. It is a new century a new age, Graffiti tagging and graffiti art has ben very big Spence the late 60s early 70’s. Its time to start looking at it in another light. As it is not the worst thing that has ever happen. The fact remains that many children and young adults that do graffiti have done it as an expression of the times. Many of them do it as something else to do other then drinking and drugs or partying’s or worse getting involved in other crimes.
I will make a guarantee right now. That if the kids doing graffiti now didn’t do it they would be into something much worse then painting or writing on something. I need to express that this small writing I am doing here is a very small endeavor to help people understand Tagging as its called. People need to stop attacking those doing it so harshly and try and understand it better. If there were more places for people to go that wanted to use paint to express them self’s. Like what’s called LEGAL walls. You would see much less graffiti on the streets. Also you would start to see the full potential of the people doing it. Again I do not agree with were some of these tags are placed but I do agree with the form of expressionism.
In short: What needs to be done is the opposite of what is being done today. You don’t need to make harsher penalties. You don’t need to keep turning people in to felons for expressionism, that is not a physically hurting someone or thing. What would you rather have running around on your streets. Kids with paint that now they have a place to TAG or kids on drugs acting like little gangsters shooting each other. Just one point I want to make. Drinking and driving is potentially 100% more destructive to a city then a kid and his paint or markers. How many people in the City of Medford have or do drive with a few in them. This whole TAGGING this is out of hand ,,TRUE. But its out of hand because people refuse to except the facts of what it really is and can be. ART!
I know it is not art to tag on a persons house, fence, a mail box and or anything else with out permission to do so. But who really want to do that if they have a place to do it. Now Even with a legal wall there is still going to be tagging in the area. But there will be MUCH LESS OF IT were it doesn’t belong thus resulting in less for the DPW to have to deal and less cost to the city over all. This topic of discussion is not closed nor is it something I am sure that many of you reading understand as of yet. It’s really rather simple. If you opened you ears and eyes to what is really going on in the world outside of the common daily rundown you could understand more clearly. Please know now that there are LEVALS of Graffiti. If some one would like to contact me from the mayors office to discuss the issue of graffiti in the city of Medford. Please feel free. I am a LEGAL graffiti artist.
sorry about the types.
I have seem some amazing stuff by graffiti artist. I wouldnt mind seeing more of the murals in Medford. But I think im one of a very few people that has seen more then what this person is calling junk tags. I work in Boston and i see a lot of really nice looking murals. I also think and agree that there should be places for people that want to do that type of thing to go. It really only makes sence. As I to agree that it is self expression more then anything else.
I used to live in Medford. Detectives used to park in front of my old girlfriends house on Capen St. Waiting for me to come out and tag something so they could catch me in the act. I used to do huge murals on the commuter rail tracks on the hillside. But my grafitti expanded out to Boston into other cities in other states. I also tagged mail boxes and peoples buisnesses. Back in 2000, the Medford, MBTA, and Massachusetts police department raided my house with search warrants. They took all my phot albums, videos, sketch books, and tons, and tons of paint. I was booked at the MBTA police station in Boston. I’ll be the 1st to admit what I did was wrong. I ended up with a 3 year suspended sentence to the house of corrections and ended up doing 300 hours of community service and had to see a probation officer in Somerville once a week for 3 years. Of course I learned my lesson. Graf is a felony in the state of Massachusetts. It’s no fun to have felonies on your record when you need a job. So beware taggers, give it up before you get caught. I was never caught in the act. So therfore I thought I was untouchable, and thought the detectives parked out front was paranoia. But it was very real and learned the hard way. 3- 5 years was a living hell because of my arrest. So if you think you’ll never get caught, think again and put the paint down.