Is the City of Santa Ana’s anti-grafitti ordinance working? I walked from my house in the Park Santiago neighborhood this afternoon over to the Barnes and Noble bookstore on Main St., and you would not believe the amount of graffiti I saw en route!
The picture above shows some of this graffiti, over in Park Santiago, in the area that leads under Main St., to the Discovery Science Center.
It really does not seem like the new ordinance has done anything to stop our graffiti problem.
I predicted all along that it would fail. Taggers are not afraid of jail time or fines. And they do their work late at night or in the early morning when our Santa Ana Police Department is busy fighting other crimes.
Is there a solution to our city’s growing graffiti problem? I think a lot of the problem stems from the lack of things to do in town. Sure, we have a lot of activities for adults, but we have a park shortage, and not enough sports fields. And have only one mail library and one small auxiliary branch on the west side.
On the plus side, we have a discount movie theater at the MainPlace Mall, that shows older films for less than $2 but we don’t have a first-class movie theater for new movies. And although we are the youngest city in Orange County, we don’t even have our own Chuck E. Cheese restaurant!
I hope that our city leaders consider changing our regulations next year to make it easier and less expensive to open new businesses here in town. We have the most expensive business licenses in Orange County, and it is not close. It is so sad to drive around and see so many vacancies. The graffiti just makes it worse.
The sinking economy has also made it even tougher for parents. Many are now working two jobs as they struggle to survive. That could be part of the graffiti problem – parents don’t know what their kids are up to.
Would more security cameras do the trick? Or perhaps using uniformed security guards to augment our short-handed police force?
Graffiti is certainly a problem, but increased fines and jail time are pointless if taggers don’t care and the SAPD can’t catch them. If we can do more to head off the problem by working with our youth and helping our working families we would be far better off.
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As a former graff writer and current member of greater Orange/LA county underground art community, and the community as a whole I feel I have in-depth insight to the problem. We need to understand the underlying issues at hand.
1.) Art is not excepted, or respected as lucrative (I.E. there is no money in it) especially as a parent working two jobs; however, it takes some vision to be creative. Just ask Walt Disney before he was a "business man" he was just some artist with a vision. . . .I wonder if he had grown up in Santa Ana, Anaheim or anywhere in Orange County if there would even be a "Disneyland"? I highly doubt it!
2.) many parents are struggling to make ends meet working two jobs to maintain an unrealistic standard of living that is more based on television fantasy then real world reality. unfortunately the streets are not paved with oro. contrary to the beliefs of some.
3.) Respect is not respected anymore. . .cops look at every citizen as a potential suspect, so in turn citizens "documented and undocumented" view cops with the same contempt. yet the police force still demands respect, but have no problem skirting the law/constitution to make that bust. Kids and young adults are not stupid they see this, so their mentality becomes one of. . ."f@#k the police!"
4.) The few programs that cities do have for teens usually don't focus on the real pressures they face with sex, drugs, gangs, problems at home, jobs, abuse, and so forth, and they never support art that may have a view contrary to what we in society believe to be "the norm"(at least not until they are dead). then these programs for fear of offending someone or saying the wrong thing communicates with them at a first grade level. As a child I always respected those adults that spoke with me at an adult level more than those that questioned my intelligence(at five I knew what my pee pee was for). As a teen when faced with going to some lame ass city sanctioned event designed by people that were out of touch and uninteresting or running around having fun busting graffiti, I would have to say that graffiti sounds more appealing.
do adults really think that they should candy coat everything, I mean these kids are not blind to the realities of the streets they unlike there parents walk home from school. . .they just do not have hope!