By Dustin Brown
In the city’s ongoing battle against graffiti, the prevailing strategy has always focused on prosecuting the vandals and removing the illegal calling cards they leave behind on walls, signs and any surfaces that retain the scars of spray paint.
But City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Woodside) has a different approach: instead of simply catching vandals after the deed has been done, why not stop them before they can begin?
That’s the solution proposed in a report released Sept. 30 by the City Council’s Oversight and Investigations Committee, which calls for stricter enforcement of the city’s laws restricting the sale of spray paint and markers to anyone under 18.
“If we’re going to win this war, we’ve got to fight the battle on numerous fronts,” said Gioia, the chairman of the investigations committee, in a recent phone interview.
Although he also advocates educating youth about the penalties of graffiti and offering positive activities to prevent vandalism from having such an allure, he said targeting the retailers that sell painting paraphernalia is a key component of the anti-graffiti campaign.
“We have to stop this at the supply side,” he said. “These measures are aimed at depriving these criminals of the weapons with which they wage this war against us.”
The report found that half of the 70 hardware stores surveyed around the city sold spray paint to minors, including 47 percent of the stores investigated in Queens — eight out of 17.
The citywide graffiti clean-up effort Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced over the summer also failed to include any provisions to target retailers, the report found.
To combat that trend, Gioia has introduced legislation, co-sponsored by City Councilwoman Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), which requires retailers to prominently post a sign that says minors cannot purchase aerosol spray paint cans or broad-tipped indelible markers. Stores that failed to do so would face fines between $250 and $1,000.
Another bill Gioia sponsored along with City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Astoria) would double the fine for retailers that repeatedly sell such merchandise to minors, hiking it to $1,000.
“I don’t think there’s anything that makes a good neighborhood look worse than graffiti,” Gioia said. “We’re going to make the city look great again.”
Peggy O’Kane, the graffiti program coordinator for the Greater Ridgewood Restoration Corporation, which has cleaned walls on about 150 buildings this year, praised Gioia’s measure while stressing it needs to be coupled with police enforcement so vandals are punished if they succeed in marking their tags.
“He’s right. Stores do sell spray paint to under 18s,” she said. “But not all graffitists are under 18, and they have friends who are over 18 who can go into the stores and get the paint for them.”
“I think Councilman Gioia is headed in the right direction,” she added.
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
