Ask any Central Valley resident about the region's top nuisances and graffiti would undoubtedly be near the top of the list.
Case in point: In Merced, one only needs to take a short drive along Highway 99 or G Street. It's not uncommon to see spots where the tagger's illegible handiwork is in plain view, scrawled across fences, railroad cars or storefront walls for all to see.
Fortunately, there are those who've refused to submit to the plague of graffiti -- and Merced police detective Allen Adrian is on the front line of that battle.
A 12-year veteran with the department, Adrian, 35, is the department's graffiti detective, a role he's held since April 2008. Although Adrian oversees hundreds of graffiti reports filed with the department, his job description goes far beyond just taking a few notes.
Like a personal signature, graffiti tell a story about the perpetrator -- and Adrian treats every incident like a crime scene. He reviews photos taken by officers on the street and painstakingly logs important clues, such as the monikers left behind by the perpetrators and various telltale signs, such as the style and nature of the graffiti.
Adrian's hard work is bearing fruit. Last year, his work resulted in more than 200 arrests -- more than four times the number of graffiti arrests the department made in 2006. "I get satisfaction from my job when I actually can identify who's tagging what, and do the investigation to the point when I can make the arrest and bring them in here," Adrian said.
The work begins
Although Adrian's full-time efforts as the graffiti detective began in 2008, as a patrol officer in 2004 he was asked by the department to begin documenting the city's graffiti. He started with a blank Excel spreadsheet and a note pad.
Back then, Adrian said officers literally had to catch the offender in the act to make an arrest. "So we didn't catch that many," said Adrian. "Then, when (former) Chief (Russ) Thomas asked me to do this full-time in April 2008, that's when I started to think about different ways to go after these taggers."
Some of those ways have included serving search warrants at the homes of suspects in graffiti cases. Often those searches yield notebooks used by the suspects to practice their graffiti, in addition to spray cans and other evidence.
Adrian said those practice drawings and other evidence can link a suspect to numerous incidents of graffiti throughout the city. "Their spray can is basically an extension of their pen," he said. "It's easy to find some practice drawings and match it to a crime scene on the street."
Even though graffiti is nothing new to Merced, Adrian said the problem ballooned during the 1990s, as the number of tagging crews and gangs in the region increased. "Gang graffiti is usually kept to a certain location, where they are marking their territory," Adrian explained. "Tagging crews want to go throughout the entire city, and get their moniker up in as many places as they can, to become known."
Steep costs
Each month between 1,000 and 2,000 incidents of graffiti at an average of 150 locations are reported in Merced, according to Merced Community Action Network, a nonprofit group that paints over and cleans up graffiti citywide.
Graffiti costs businesses, homeowners and local governments nationwide more than $20 billion in damages annually, Adrian said. The city of Merced pays Merced Community Action Network around $200,000 annually to perform graffiti abatement on city property.
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