I don't know what it is like in other centers, but over here it's gotten completely out-of-hand.
I could never understand the need to have ones' name written in balloon form. Some of these guys
seem to take extreme life threatening risks just to write their names, or other mumble jumble.
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Canadian soldier tags N.D.G. vandal
'Blaze' caught red-handed defacing war memorial:
MONTREAL - Chalk it up as a victory for the anti-graffiti movement.
Brangwyn Jones went to Notre Dame de Grâce park Saturday night to attend an Urban Arts festival organized by Prévention N.D.G., a community organization trying to stamp out unsightly graffiti in the West End neighbourhood.
The group had set up several legal "graffiti walls" to allow young artists to showcase their work and to explain to taggers that there is more to graffiti than defacing property with spray paint.
Shortly after 5 p.m., Jones watched a teenage boy approach one of the walls and spray-paint the name "Blaze" on a plywood wall. An alarm bell went off in Jones's head.
He had seen that tag before - in the very same park.
It had been several weeks earlier, after a vandal had tagged the name Blaze on the cenotaph, the war memorial that stands in the park near the corner of Girouard Ave. and Sherbrooke St. Jones, a soldier in the Canadian Forces, was one of a number of N.D.G. residents outraged by the senseless act of vandalism.
"I couldn't believe that he tagged his name in front of me," Jones recalled of Saturday's incident.
The 36-year-old soldier wasn't about to let the vandal off the hook.
He brought the teen to the attention of the event's organizers and then called Montreal police.
He decided not to approach the teenager himself in case the boy decided to flee.
"I didn't want to have to run after him," Jones said.
When police officers arrived, they spoke to the teen, took down his information and took pictures of the tag.
Police officers told Jones they would investigate.
After the incident on Saturday night, Jones walked down Sherbrooke and said he took 23 pictures of the tag Blaze spray-painted in various places. He plans to send them to the police to help with the investigation.
As part of a campaign to stamp out graffiti in the Côte des Neiges-Notre Dame de Grâce borough, borough officials announced last month that they will begin invoicing vandals for the cleanup costs of removing their graffiti.
Montreal police have been keeping a registry that lists all graffiti-related infractions and can link a graffiti vandal to several tags. The cleaning costs will be added up and a bill will be sent to the offender. If the offender is a minor, the bill will be sent to the parents.
Jones said graffiti is rampant in his neighbourhood.
"There is tagging of mailboxes and every lamppost on the road," he said.
City councillor Susan Clarke is in charge of the anti-graffiti portfolio in the borough. The invoicing process should help reduce the costs of graffiti removal, which was about $564,000 in 2009, she said.
In 2009, more than 19,000 square metres of graffiti were removed from the borough and 11 artistic murals created.
Clarke said residents should call 911 if they witness someone tagging property.
Jones said he hopes the new policy will give police and borough officials more clout in the fight against senseless tagging.
"Hopefully, he will have to pay for all the stuff he has done."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Canadian+soldier+tags+vandal/3238688/story.html#ixzz0stJDKSUt
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