Chad Burkhardt didn’t even know he was the victim of graffiti, but he knew something was up when he saw and heard the commotion outside his house.
“My doorbell rang after midnight,” Burkhardt says. “I looked outside and saw five police cars in the street. I was informed that my trashcan, which sits in the front towards the street, was marked by graffiti. They even tagged a car down the street.”
Two weeks before this midnight visit, someone had defaced Burkhardt’s trashcan, but this time the vandals failed to make a clean getaway.
Police observed two young men — Jose Merlan, 17, and Stephan Garza, 18 — tagging city property with a marker. Tagging refers to vandals leaving their signature with either marker or spray paint. Garza and Merlan were hard at work tagging things on Skillman; the duo signed items such as manhole covers, city construction signs, sidewalk blocks and traffic signal cabinets. The cost of damage to the city was almost $2,000. After being caught, both vandals confessed to damaging Burckhardt’s trashcan.
According to the Graffiti Abatement Program findings presented to the City Council in 2007, 75.6 percent of graffiti affects private property.
Burkhardt says that he has lived in the area for five years, and despite these shenanigans, he’s happy to live there.
“This is a remarkably calm neighborhood even with Skillman right on the corner,” Burkhardt says. “I’m not too worried about it. We go out on walks and there is great mix of old and new folks.”
Sr. Cpl. Eddie Crawford says this case was unusual because the vandals were caught.
“It is rare that you find this in graffiti,” Crawford says. “However, there is a difference between tagging and graffiti. Graffiti is more gang related. We have a gang unit that does nothing but go after gang-related markings all the way up to murder.
“Tagging is more like street artists. They put their signature on hard-to-reach places like street signs, on freeways and on trains.”
Crawford says taggers even make revenue by putting their work online.
“Don’t ask me how to do it, but they try to outdo each other by tagging dangerous places.” —Gabby Martinez
