Portland is waging a war against graffiti — to clean up the streets and the city’s battered reputation — by doubling down on community and law enforcement efforts targeting the most prolific taggers.
Why it matters: Graffiti cleanup costs both the city and affected small businesses thousands of dollars each year. Widespread tagging can also fuel perceptions of disorder.
- “For a lot of people, it does lead to a subconscious or conscious feeling that there’s some amount of permissiveness for criminality in areas where they see graffiti,” Amelia Flohr, an officer on Portland Police Bureau’s graffiti team, told Axios.
Driving the news: There have been several recent high-profile arrests and convictions since the city renewed its dedicated graffiti unit within PPB’s Central Precinct during the pandemic, when tagging was rampant.
- Last month, prolific tagger Bambi was identified as Darvin V. Duffield, 22, who later pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree criminal mischief and was sentenced to two years probation. She was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution.
- Investigators also found “thousands of drawn or painted examples of the moniker Monk6,” a local tagger featured in a prominent YouTube documentary, during a search warrant of a Sunnyside neighborhood home in July.
Plus: One year ago, Jerry Mijangos (known as KASR) became the first graffiti vandal to be sent to prison since the crackdown for violating previous tagging-related probation terms…