Beat Cop: Tag, You're It...

Did any one notice massive amounts of graffiti on buildings as they drove to work today? I didn't either, probably because San Jose has long made reducing graffiti a priority. Travel to any major city in the country and you will very likely recall tagging spread throughout the city where you were vacationing or on a business trip. Some large cities like San Francisco, LA and New York have even become destinations for traveling vandals. People traveling to San Jose can feel our community pride and have a sense of security knowing that a city this free from graffiti makes crime a priority. A business looking to relocate to San Jose surely will be influenced by tagging in the area of their prospective business. There has been a long standing partnership between city leaders, city services, community members, business, probation, courts and the police department to keep San Jose free from graffiti. Unfortunately, like many crimes in our city, graffiti vandalism has risen in recent years. Two San Jose Police Detectives in the METRO unit are responsible for investigating thousands of graffiti and vandalism cases a year.

Now the citizens of San Jose have a new weapon to help keep their streets clean. A little more than two weeks ago, the San Jose Police Department launched a new online graffiti reporting system. The new system is accessed on the department’s website, SJPD.org, under the Report a Crime/Graffiti tab. It allows citizens to take digital photographs of graffiti and upload the pictures directly into a police database. The reported graffiti does not even need to be on your property. Graffiti detectives track the distinctive tags and locate the suspects responsible for them. Having a database of tags allows for effective prosecution of vandals in our community. Once a suspect is associated to a distinctive tag, detectives can then charge the suspect with past tags logged in the database. Victims of the vandalism are reconnected and have an opportunity to recover the cost of the vandalism through the court’s restitution process. All police agencies in the county have signed on to the San Jose police-initiated system. Other cities in the state like San Francisco are joining the shared network as well. Citizens who are in need of a crime report for insurance proposes or who have suspect information can still call 3-1-1; or file an online report using SJPD.org.

If you locate graffiti on city property, you can report it for clean up to the city of San Jose Anti graffiti hotline at (408) 277-2758. Remember, by immediately addressing new graffiti, we send a strong, zero-tolerance message to the perpetrators. If you want to get directly involved in keeping your community graffiti- and crime-free, you can become a volunteer. The City of San Jose has a program to assist residents and businesses that need to remove graffiti from their property. Free paint and graffiti solvent is available through the San Jose Anti-Graffiti program at 501 Vine St. To pick up your free Anti-Graffiti Tool Kit or to volunteer to clean up graffiti, call (408) 277-3208. Working together we can protect San Jose from the blight and crime associated with graffiti.

Proudly serving you,
Your Beat Cop