Graffiti covered a prominent wall at Silver Star Plaza just weeks after Pam Story moved her business there in October.
A possible gang symbol was also etched into the front window of her business, Vancouver ATA Karate for Kids, before she moved in at 6808 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd.
“I don’t feel threatened, it’s just more of a deterrent to business,” said Story, who is a second-degree black belt. “Graffiti doesn’t invite business.”
She moved the martial arts school to the plaza after two years near Mill Plain Boulevard, partly to reach more low-income families.
“When I first moved in there was a ton of graffiti and tags,” she said, adding that persistent vandalism could make her consider canceling a lease.
Story is quick to report graffiti to her landlord or the police, but she’s also tackling it in more fundamental ways.
“(Graffiti is) an outward sign of a growing problem that I hope to address with my school,” she said. “Kids who have good self-confidence don’t need to turn to gangs.”
Graffiti is getting more attention in Vancouver these days, thanks to increased citizen complaints, a new graffiti taskforce made up of city staff and the possible reinstatement of the city’s gang taskforce.
Only 20 percent of graffiti is gang-related, but the other 80 percent can instill a sense of fear and neglect because most people don’t know the difference, said Drue Russell, a west Vancouver neighborhood police officer.
Russell sees more graffiti on the southwest side of the city, in the Fourth Plain Boulevard corridor from Andresen Road to Kauffman Avenue and on Mill Plain Boulevard west of I-205.
The patches of paint covering graffiti are easy to find. It is much harder to find the graffiti artists, he said.
“To get them for a misdemeanor, we have to catch them in the act or on video tape,” Russell said. “It’s difficult to prosecute.”
Colleen Catching and Richard Landis work for the city of Vancouver as citizen advocates and have been tasked with finding comprehensive ways to improve tracking, prevention and abatement of graffiti.
Catching coordinates the city’s graffiti taskforce, which is looking for input from businesses and residents on ways to rid the city of graffiti. Catching is the contact for the taskforce, and can be reached at 360-696-8139.
Currently, graffiti complaints go to the city’s police and public works departments, the city manager’s office and neighborhood associations. Those offices keep reports in databases that don’t talk to each other, making it hard to get statistics.
“We need a better system to track them all,” Catching said.
Not only that, many graffiti occurrences go unreported.
“Even if we’ve got an increase in reporting we might not have an increase (in graffiti),” Landis said.
Neighborhood police officers will be asking a trial group of Hi-School True Value and Ace hardware stores to display signs acknowledging their cooperation with the Police Department on the issue.
They’re asking stores to be more careful about selling spray paint, marking pens or glass etching tools to minors by checking ID. Russell said many Vancouver stores already have similar policies in place, but taking this step will show that businesses and the police are working together.
Russell said prompt removal nearly eliminates the chance of recurrence. But when business owners don’t act quickly, graffiti tends to multiply, and there’s no way to enforce cleanup, which is the responsibility of the property owner. Public offices are responsible for removing graffiti only from public property.
Catching said there has been talk of a possible ordinance to enforce cleanup, but she would rather it not get to that point.
“We would try every route before we went the route of civil or criminal penalties,” she said. “Our goal is ultimately voluntary compliance.”
Many businesses already cooperate. Amazing Stories comics, cards and game shop, 2101 E. Fourth Plain Blvd., has been hit by graffiti several times, and owners are quick to paint over it.
Store Manager Jason Rivera said the process has become par for the course.
“I’m just glad it’s not worse,” he said of the vandalism.
The artful Spiderman mural on the store’s front door was tagged in the summer of 2007, and the building’s back wall – visible from Fort Vancouver Way – has been hit repeatedly.
“I wish it was art that somebody took time on,” Rivera said. “The tagging is totally illegible – the epitome of juvenile and just irritating.”
Graffiti tends to appear there in the summer, when he guesses kids are “out-of-their-minds bored” Rivera said. He suspects much of the activity comes from gang imitators.
“When they did tag us, it was in places that were easy to clean,” Rivera said, “almost like it wasn’t malicious.”
Even so, Amazing Stories has bars on its windows.
Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com.
