ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 9, 1996 TAG: 9602090025
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FAIRFAX
SOURCE: Associated Press
Graffiti vandalism is creeping from inner-city Washington into Northern Virginia's suburbs, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and prompting police and business leaders to seek ways to attack it.
Graffiti caused more than $800,000 in damages to city Metro buses alone in 1994, the most recent year for which figures are available. In the suburbs, vandals have scaled water towers, highway overpasses and power transformers to make their marks in spray paint.
``Billboards, buildings, mailboxes, newspaper boxes and street signs,'' said Joseph Zelinka, a representative of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. ``Just about anything these days can serve as a young vandal's palette.''
The council is planning a conference of regional law enforcement and business leaders March 20-21 in Annandale to discuss growing concerns that suburban governments have about graffiti.
In recent years, police have linked graffiti to the deterioration of neighborhoods and business districts throughout the Washington area.
Richard Condon, a Florida consultant who is organizing the conference, said that left unchecked, graffiti can take over neighborhoods like weeds.
``Community deterioration starts with small things, like a broken window,'' said Condon, a former Justice Department official who has lived in Prince William County. ``If you don't take care of the smaller thing, then the bigger problems eventually find their way in.''
More than a dozen graffiti experts are scheduled to address the conference, including leaders of a major vandalism task force from Suffolk County, N.Y.
The conference also will feature at least three speakers who helped launch Los Angeles' Operation Clean Sweep in 1991, which attacked graffiti in that city.
Graffiti became a major concern to local governments and police during the past decade with the surge of youth gangs in the Washington area. Proposals for stricter penalties and fines for vandals resulted.
After Fairfax County police noticed a rise in graffiti, the department treated graffiti as a special form of vandalism.
From September 1994 to March 15, 1995, the most recent period for which data were available, 336 graffiti incidents were reported in the county. Police closed 42 cases and arrested 75 people, most of them under 21, said Lt. Bob Callahan, who is coordinating the enforcement effort.
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