Urban Scrawl Invades High-Rent District

There was a time, not long ago, when a guy could purchase a home for a quarter of a million dollars in West Los Angeles and not have to worry about someone spray-painting graffiti on it.

But for Bob Levy and his neighbors in the well-tended Oxford Triangle community that borders on Marina del Rey, those days are over. Just last week, someone called “Trippy” left his calling card on the side of Levy’s garage.

It was the third time in two years that Levy’s house had been vandalized by youths armed with spray paint. They have also hit several of his neighbors’ homes.

“These people are like dogs.” Levy complained. “They’re marking their territory just like dogs do. And it’s practically impossible to stop them.”

Major Inroads

For Levy and others living and working on the Westside, the writing is clearly on the wall these days. Graffiti, that most primitive form of written communication, is making major inroads into some pretty sophisticated places.

It can be seen on the pale pink facade of a restaurant on Santa Monica’s trendy Main Street, on a school in Brentwood, at the beachfront in Malibu and even in some upscale neighborhoods such as Oxford Triangle and Rancho Park.

Westside police say graffiti sightings are on the rise throughout the area, including such typical graffiti locations as Hollywood and Venice. The responsibility lies mostly with gangs seeking to expand their turf, according to authorities, but they also blame rebellious youth groups and affluent youngsters.

In one recent case, police arrested a 9-year-old boy for painting “KGB” on the side of a West Los Angeles business. They later discovered the acronym, which was spotted in several places, stood for “Kids Gone Bad.”

“We are seeing more and more of this type of stuff coming into the Westside,” said Lt. Gabe Ornelas, commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau gang unit. “These people are like roaches. They mostly come out at night. But people are becoming more aware of it.”

Police cannot say exactly how much the graffiti problem has grown. But most agree that it has increased substantially, thanks in part to membership in Westside gangs also being on the rise. And while the Westside has nowhere near the degree of gang-related violence found in other areas, Ornelas said graffiti is one sure sign of an increased gang presence.

Problem Growing

On a recent weekday the lieutenant led a tour of some of the Westside’s worst graffiti sites. Pico Boulevard is littered with the stuff. Even the stately palm trees that line the front of the stylish Westside Pavilion and the signs in front of 20th Century Fox Studios have repeatedly been vandalized.

Graffiti also marks many of the newspaper racks, traffic light switching boxes and alleyways in Westwood Village. And many businesses along other major thoroughfares contain the familiar scrawlings of Westside gangs such as “V13,” “SM13,” “SOTEL” and names such as “Sleepy” and “Zig Zag.”

Still another major graffiti site is the Cheviot Hills Recreation Center, a quiet park near Cheviot Hills and Rancho Park where buildings are practically encased in spray paint. Ornelas said South Central Los Angeles gangs apparently have started hanging out at the recreation area on weekends.

Matt Ehrlich, the assistant park director, said the problem has grown steadily for the past couple of years. Park officials used to routinely paint over the graffiti, until the sheer volume of it became too great. In an effort to help, one park patron recently donated a spray painter to the staff.

“It’s not as subtle as it used to be,” Ehrlich said. “People are really seeing it more, and they are trying to stop it before it gets out of hand.”

Margaret Welch of the Rancho Park Chamber of Commerce said the graffiti problem also extends to the neighborhoods around the park. In recent months, she said, the chamber has received complaints from residents who were startled to see young people spraying gang insignias on mailboxes in broad daylight.

Chilling Effect

Ornelas said the specter of gang activity can have a chilling effect on a community. “This type of activity shows people that gangs are here, and that scares them,” he said as he drove through the tidy Rancho Park area. “It’s like a cancer is creeping in, and we have to find a way to stop it.”

Police have already taken one step in the effort to combat graffiti and other gang problems on the Westside. A task force composed of officers from several jurisdictions held its first meeting last week, and will continue to confer on a monthly basis. Ornelas said the idea is to share information.

“This is the first time we have had a chance to get to know each other,” Ornelas said. “And the smaller departments see gangs as a growing problem.”

Santa Monica is one of those smaller communities with the potential for a bigger problem. Graffiti has always been evident in poorer sections of town, but more recently it has started appearing in the office district around Ocean Park Boulevard and on pricey Main Street, the city’s primary tourist strip.

In one instance, vandals sprayed a huge gang symbol on the gray stucco facade of the Ocean Park Plaza, a new office building at 2701 Ocean Park Blvd. In another case a different gang symbol was sprayed across the wall in front of the chic Wave restaurant at 2820 Main St.

Gangs Advertising

Detective Hector Cavacos, the Santa Monica Police Department’s gang specialist, said there is “noticeably” more graffiti in the city now. “The gang members are advertising,” he said. “They want people to see their monikers.”

Graffiti has also started appearing on some public sites in Brentwood. Betty Heaume, secretary-treasurer of the Brentwood Homeowners Assn., said residents are becoming concerned that the graffiti is a signal of worse things to come. “There have been some calls,” she said. “People were upset.”

Leon Cooper, president of the Malibu Township Council, said concern is also growing in that community. “Most of Malibu’s beach walls are littered with the stuff,” Cooper said. “Highway signs also seem to be popular. . . . There are all kinds of foul statements and gang gibberish that cannot even be translated. It’s some mysterious argot that these morons insist on using.”

Lt. Bill McSweeney of the county Sheriff’s Department substation in Malibu said juvenile delinquents from affluent families who “fancy themselves as gangs” are partially to blame for the area’s graffiti problems. “These groups are not violent,” McSweeney said. “They mostly commit vandalism.”

Gang copy cats have also surfaced, to a lesser degree, in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills Police Lt. Robert Curtis said graffiti occasionally appears on such well-traveled thoroughfares as Olympic and Robertson boulevards.

Culprits Rarely Caught

Officials say the presence of organized gangs or gang copycats in virtually every Westside community essentially makes it impossible to stem the flow of spray paint seeping across the area. They also concede that graffiti culprits are rarely caught because most work in the dead of night. And those who are apprehended face meager punishment, since the crime is a misdemeanor.

The common wisdom is that the best way to combat graffiti is to immediately remove it. Police say graffiti artists usually become discouraged and move on when their work is wiped out. “If it isn’t handled quickly these people decide that you don’t care and the problem accelerates,” Ornelas said.

The city of West Hollywood has a special graffiti hot line and a $25,000-a-year contract with a private company that eradicates the writing, even if it’s located on private property. Peter Feenstra, the public works administrator, said the program is working. “I would not call our problem critical,” he said. “It (the graffiti plan) has been a very successful program for us.”

In areas where the government does not take such an active role in discouraging graffiti, however, it often remains indefinitely. Graffiti is commonplace in the Fairfax shopping area, even though officials have repeatedly offered free paint to merchants.

Stanley Treitel is one of the leaders of the Vitalize Fairfax project, a government-assisted effort to rejuvenate the Fairfax Shopping District. Treitel said that the $500,000 government effort has been hampered by countless graffiti attacks. One culprit, who calls himself “Lucky,” has struck repeatedly.

“After you start doing all of the work we’ve done and put in all of the money we have put in, it makes your stomach turn,” Treitel said. “But there’s not much we can do.”