Police are investigating numerous incidents where someone painted "hater" or "h8er" on public property. This incident occurred on Ruskin Street on Nov. 11.
West U police are investigating several incidents where an unknown person or persons defaced public property with graffiti.
Police know of about 22 incidents where city owned buildings or property had something drawn on it.
Some of the tagged properties include a junction box cover outside of the Senior Center, the wall at the West U Recreation Center and a wall on Ruskin Street, among others.
All of the incidents have had the word “hater” or “h8r” painted on the property, Lt. Charlie Deily said.
The tagging incidents were first done in magic marker and now are being done in paint.
Police believe that the people doing the graffiti are area teenagers and are most likely in middle school. They do not believe that the incidents are gang related.
“You can tell there’s more than one person involved,” Deily said.
City workers have been trying to clean graffiti from the fence at the West U Recreation Center.
The city has had crews working on cleaning up the graffiti. Everything has been pressure washed, cleaned or repainted, police said.
The public works department has been working closely with the parks department to remove the graffiti and come back to normal, Director of Public Works Chris Peifer said.
“It’s very unfortunate,” he said. “It is an unwelcome distraction.”
Peifer said the incidents have been going on for the past couple of months and the tagging has been done on everything from light polls to walls.
The person or group of people doing the graffiti has a “disregard for the public good and public property,” he said.
Peifer estimated that the cost to the city for each incident is about $1,000.
The city usually sends a crew of two people to clean up the graffiti, they have to pay for the time of the individuals, product costs and recoating and equipment costs, he said.
If the paint doesn’t match the wall, the entire wall needs to be repainted, which is an additional cost.
“Even if they don’t stop, they will get caught,” Peifer said.
Anyone who sees anything out of the ordinary or has information about these incidents is asked to call the West U Police Department at 713-668-0330.
November 23rd, 2010 at 9:35 am
This is really a shame. But the police are all over this. And I am told the grafitti on Ruskin Street will be removed by the end of the day today (Tuesday, November 23). Have a Happy Thanksgiving…
November 23rd, 2010 at 3:32 pm
If and when these little jewels of society are caught take them straight to their folks house with an invoice for clean up year to date and tell them they can have their little jewel back once invoice is paid in full-of course cash only no credit accepted…..
November 23rd, 2010 at 3:58 pm
The grafitti on Ruskin has been removed.