Citizen Stakeout for Taggers Leads to 5 Arrests

Police say an alleged tagger known as “Blert” and four others, all teen-agers, had no idea someone was watching as they dashed in the darkness toward a pristine section of the Simi Valley Freeway over the weekend.

Usually, no one is.

But this weekend, the bushes along the freeway had eyes.

A small army of 20 to 30 neighborhood volunteers staked out a five-mile stretch of freeway with binoculars and video cameras from 9:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday as part of a unique multi-agency effort to catch taggers in the act. The citizens were backed up by increased police patrols and by helicopters outfitted with infrared night vision equipment.

The result: Michael Flores, 21, of Northridge, who uses the moniker Blert, and four Valley juveniles, ages 16 and 17, were charged with vandalism, said Officer Martin Pinner of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division. And police and neighborhood groups, who joined together in March, 1992, to form the Devonshire Volunteer Surveillance Team, were calling the weekend’s joint effort with Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol a huge success.

“It’s giving back to my neighborhood,” said one volunteer, who did not want his name published. “Crime is going crazy here. It really is. The last couple of years, it’s getting very nerve-racking with the shooting and the graffiti and the drugs.”

According to Pinner, the Simi Valley Freeway has become a tagger favorite in recent weeks. Caltrans cleaned up the freeway from the San Diego Freeway interchange to the Tampa Avenue exit in anticipation of the surveillance operation. That way there could presumably be no question about who had tagged what.

Volunteers watched as the teen-age taggers ran across the freeway lanes, Pinner said. Then they summoned police on portable radios. The suspects were captured after they ran back across the freeway.

The first two teen-age graffiti suspects were arrested shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday as they painted their “tags,” Pinner said. The following morning, three more taggers, including Flores, allegedly ran right past the citizen stakeout team. Flores, who wore surgical gloves, was arrested on suspicion of painting his group’s tag on the pillars where the San Diego Freeway crosses the Simi Valley Freeway, police said.

Pinner said word apparently traveled back quickly to other would-be taggers. No graffiti activity was spotted Sunday night and Monday morning.