How do Washington cities deal with the problem of graffiti on public and private property?
There appear to be two basic approaches taken by Washington cities to regulate and control graffiti. One approach is aimed at the “graffiti artists” or “taggers” and makes it a crime to damage or deface public or private property. Of course, to be effective this approach requires that police officers must actually catch a tagger in the act. These types of ordinances have been on the books for a long time and, while necessary to have in place, they have not proven to be particularly effective at deterring the incidence of graffiti. A new approach being tried by some cities is aimed at getting the graffiti removed as soon as possible, the theory being that quick removal will deny the tagger any time to admire their work and therefore remove, or at least reduce, their incentive to do it in the first place. On public property this means some sort of active monitoring program and the use of either city crews or volunteers to wash walls and paint over the graffiti. This may work fine on publ
