The Observation Deck

Vince

I guess I still have many questions. Go figure.

I understand the idea. Michael Gill and I along with our posse used to clean up the railroad
tracks each year from one end of Lakewood to another. Every person doing this was
breaking the law. I believe it was a fourth degree felony. It was because we felt so strongly
about the fact that the area was dangerous. Also after many calls to the railroad the best
answer we ever got was, they wanted it dangerous to keep kids away. Of course we both
realized how insane this practice was, and we were all willing to take the arrest to make
Lakewood nicer and better.

However, none of this ever made the city or the railroads more responsible. One could
even say that it made them more lax, in taking care of their own property.

So back to the discussion. Something has happened in the last couple of months that
allowed the graffiti to get out of control and everywhere. Now I spoke to a member of
council about the 24 hour law, and they claimed it never existed. Well it did, with the
building department in charge of it. So what has happened with more police, and a much
safer city that has allowed the vandals to take over?

If this is the answer for the future, forget government and do it yourself I would love it
to be said, and allow us to discuss it. At the same time I see more and more money
coming out of the city into groups that are highly paid to tell volunteers what to do, and
how to do it. Maybe this money would be better spent on the building department?
something has happened where driving around the city is just not a good experience.
To be honest there is less tagging in Collinwood and East Cleveland than here. You have
explained how we remove it, now could someone tell us how to stop it, and correct the
slide from being Lakewood into being Cleveland?

In the book "slaughter of cities" this is one of many techniques to destroy community value
so that developers can come in and buy property for pennies on the dollar. Two months
ago we saw a Lakewood home go for $19,000! Dare I say a number like that has not
happened in decades in this town. This is also another technique used developers fighting
for regionalism, to make residents give up, and try "anything," even as foolish as
regionalism with other dying cities to die together!

Is this a crime, an op or both?

FWIW


.

My explanation is exactly how to "stop" it.

I was just at Einstein on Detroit and saw that big yellow deposit box for clothes.

On the back of the box were several of the common, prominent tags. Each one crossed out and replaced by the other. SO you have about 6 tags - 5 of which are crossed out with the 6th being the "winner".

So if the first one were removed more quickly - this spot would not be so visibly defaced. This spot would not now be so hard to clean up. The same dynamic goes on at a large scale across buildings, blocks and the entire city. Remove the battleground and you remove the stimulus.

When people do this - they are not thinking "I am going to make this town look bad". They are simply thinking "I want to throw up my sign to other taggers that I am the sh*t".

If someone made me clean up my own tag - that punishment would not relieve me of my desire to make my mark. Heck - I would be so pissed at the city I would tag everything in sight! You wont completely squelch this sensation so "stopping" by prosecution is a long shot.

But if you know the key stimulus and you can find ways to attack the stimulus - then you can at least curb the type of visible stuff that you see on that yellow box by the Einstein Bros parking lot. Which - by the way - is directly across from our new Panera and HQ of LakewoodAlive.

I am not going to get into what some groups do or what group or dept should be in charge. Graffiti is illegal - when caught people are prosecuted and we would prob catch more if people were caring about their own spaces. But there isn't even the most basic desire to see that yellow box be clean so why would we sink tax dollars or efforts into city-wide, unfundable depts?

Another analogy...

Ruth at Gatherings on Madison decided to plant some flowers in the tree plots in front of her store. We talked about how people thought she was crazy - "Someone will just come and rip these out" people would tell her. So that's it? DOn't plant flowers 'cause someone might rip them out? They could be replanted within a few days or even 2 weeks easily. But some people think it isn't worth having flowers planted for HUNDREDS OF DAYS because 3-6 days out of the year they may have been damaged.

WTF????

Same with untagging -

"you wont stop it by cleaning that..."
"you know that those punks will put that right back up there..."
"do you work for the city or something?"
"you must really care because that looks like hard work"

And this one...

"nice to see someone actually removing one of those for once" (this one from Police Officer walking by - full of sarcasm)

This officer - a guy who covers the entire city has never seen someone removing a tag? All these reactions tell me that tag removing is a crazy ass rare thing that no one but the incarcerated would be made to do.

By my estimates there are probably about 2,000 people in this city that are capable of cleaning off this stuff when they see it and probably 30 kids putting up serious tags.