AC-T: Asheville officials consider policies for dealing with graffiti

From the Asheville Citizen-Times

“Asheville Examines Graffiti Policies”
by Romando Dixson

Since July 2012, city crews have cleaned or covered graffiti on public property in more than 14,000 cases at a cost of more than $91,000, but the city has yet to craft a policy for dealing with the issue on private property.

Change may be on the horizon.

Cities statewide have policies on how to handle graffiti, and Asheville has been taking notes. The issue will be part of Asheville’s public safety committee agenda Monday [March 24].

Business and property owners will be watching as the issue plays out publicly in the coming months. …

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About Margaret Williams
Editor Margaret Williams first wrote for Xpress in 1994. An Alabama native, she has lived in Western North Carolina since 1987 and completed her Masters of Liberal Arts & Sciences from UNC-Asheville in 2016. Follow me @mvwilliams

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5 thoughts on “AC-T: Asheville officials consider policies for dealing with graffiti

  1. Randy Campbell

    First thing to understand is that graffiti will not go away unless you fight back. Second, most cities think that increased spending on graffiti removal helps, well it does not! Fast removal keeps the city looking better because less graffiti is seen, but the graffiti continues and the city continues to spend on removal, a never ending circle of spending. Now for the answer and it may shock many of you, but the only way to stop graffiti, is to catch the vandals and get them into the court system where some controls can be placed on them. There is a way to do this without spending a city into bankruptcy, plus it has been proven to actually work. recently a city contracted with an Australian company called Tripwire systems and Grip systems. This company went in, documented the graffiti and the locations, then removed the graffiti and documented any new graffiti and the locations and once again removed it. The key here is document the graffiti cases in their database. Then the company set up their covert cameras that when a vandal is at a location, the camera sends photo alerts to one or multiple cell phones. This allows police to be notified and respond to capture at the location. This last city that tried this system was able to get an 87% reduction in graffiti in their city, plus 62 of their most prolific vandals were captured or some even just stopped due to so many being arrested. How is that for a successful system, 87% reduction, and believe it or not, this was accomplished in just three months. This is an actual system that works, it has been proven to work, the cost to set this in place is just a small fraction of what is spent on just removing graffiti, plus if a city really wants to be involved and save cost, they whole process can be run by city volunteers, (except the response needed by police to make the arrest) So why are more cities not on board? maybe they just have not researched what works to stop graffiti. My group (The Nograf Network) is a non profit that has worked for over 25 years to help provide any information such as this, free of charge to any city who wants to know how to stop graffiti.

  2. Steve Rogers

    Asheville’s political spectrum resembles Feudal Fascism when the landowners and politicians make rules for all. The media defends their financial supporters at the cost of free speech. A message to the old guard, the world is changing. Graffiti is art. The youth will cede control, and the time is coming soon. This is why graffiti bothers you. It is a sign of things to come.

    • sharpleycladd

      “Feudal Fascism” and “Paleolithic TV Dinners” have been on my Anachronisms to Hate list for some time.

      Read a book.

      Graffiti is masturbation at best, so the sign of things to come is, I suppose, apropos. Sound and fury, signifying nothing, from those who cannot be bothered to learn and make real change.

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