Manchester Wants to Rid City of Graffiti

By Ellen Grimm on Friday, July 11, 2008.

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In Manchester, desecrating buildings with graffiti is a felony.
Those in charge of removing it estimate that 40-percent of city businesses have been affected at some point.
NHPR Correspondent Ellen Grimm found out how big the battle is during a ride in Manchester’s Graffiti-Removal Van.

VAN SOUNDS
They're known among some graffiti practitioners as the buf crew.
Crew member Steve Neuman says that's buf spelled without a second "f" -- an unconventional take on spelling that's characteristic of the graffiti crowd.
NEUMAN1: We've actually seen it painted on the walls, painted on picnic tables, on different venues. The gentleman sitting behind you -- he encountered about a 12-foot, what appeared to be either a bunny or a dog, and in the belly it had "something buf crew," which I can't say on the radio. It wasn't very nice... They call us the buff crew because we buff it off. Well, really, we're the pressure wash crew.
Neuman has been removing graffiti in Manchester for about six years.
On this weekday morning, he and his colleague are in the city's Graffiti Removal Van.
It's full of bottles and cans of some highly corrosive chemicals that remove graffiti paint.
A Woody the Cowboy doll dangles from some shelving inside the van.
NEUMAN2: They're not sure what to make of us for the most part. We have a big penguin painted on the side of our van, so we get a lot of people that stare. So I call it penguin envy.
Neuman says the graffiti battle can seem never-ending.
And some kids have been outright brazen about it, painting tags on street signs in the daytime, minutes after his crew removed them.
NEUMAN3: We take it off, they put it back. And they're always trying to one up us. Well, right now, in the current program, we do not go above the first floor level, so now you're starting to see more tagging going on above the first floor -- kids risking their lives to get up on a bridge, 75, 100 feet off the ground, with no support -- just, you know, "Hey, look where I went."

The penguin painted on the van's side is holding a pretty big hose.
And on this morning, Neuman's graffiti-removal partner is holding a pretty fearsome-looking hose himself.
Neuman's colleague did not want to be interviewed on tape. He has good reason to be uneasy about publicity.
His leg was seriously injured when a group of kids driving by threw a full can of soda at him while he was doing his job.
He says many buildings and have been "tagged" or marked in some way and a few markings have been outright nasty.
A doctor's business has been regularly targeted with swastika signs.
Some graffiti is considered to be gang related.
Often it's a series of initials or cryptic messages - what Steve Neuman calls a tag.
NEUMAN4: A tag to me is almost like a signature or fingerprint of sorts. And they go around and post it in their turf, if you want to call it that. Most of it, you can't understand. Most of the time, it's not phonetically correct. They have different ways of writing names or titles they give themselves.
It costs the city between $75,000 and $100,000 a year to pay for the graffiti-fighting van, labor, and materials.
It’s expensive and hazardous to remove.
It requires wearing face shields and other safety equipment.
HOSE SOUNDS
At a gas station, Neuman and his co-worker are removing a large black scrawl on the side of the building.
They’re spraying a hose attached to a 4,000-pound tank of water on a trailer behind the van.
NEUMAN5: It is gasoline powered; it is heated with kerosene. We heat to a little over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. It comes through the nozzle at a little over 3500 pounds per square inch, so it's quite strong. Even as big as I am, it definitely threw me for a loop the first time I squeezed that handle.
They break out the brush after applying two different chemicals and the high-pressure hose.
BRUSH SOUNDS.
Then it's back to the hose.
Neuman6 (hose sounds in background): Now it's coming off much better.....
Some Manchester residents have removed their own share of graffiti.
Neighborhood activist Cheryl Mitchell has covered up the graffiti in the alley behind her home, using a can of spray paint.
But she has a more ambitious plan.
She wants to see the people responsible for graffiti help beautify the areas they've defaced.
MITCHELL: We want to get kids involved in being able to put that artistry, whether it be again a bubble letter. Some of these things are really cool, they're really nice you see them on the highways, you see them on billboards. They're in places where they shouldn't be. But some of the artistry is great. You want those kids to be involved in doing things like this so they can show off, so they can be creative. Just turn the kid around.
She's lined up groups of people, including artists and local organizations, to help paint murals, pictures of hummingbirds, dragons, and flowers, on the garage doors that line alleyways around the city.
It’s called the Back-Alleys Project and Mitchell hopes it will be a positive way to deal with graffiti.
Steve Neuman says police involvement is also key to stopping the practice.
NEUMAN7: This is a crime. Here in the city of Manchester this is a class B felony. That's a maximum of $1,000 fine and possible jail time. I've even heard stories in the works of possibly kids losing their licenses. I know that's something they're thinking of putting through the House and the Senate now.
Just this month, Manchester police arrested two men they say are responsible for widespread graffiti in the city. State police have also filed charges against them, linking the two to graffiti on Interstate 293.
If Cheryl Mitchell had her way, the young men would join her mural-painting crew this summer – in order to, in her words, “change something bad into something positive and good.”
For NHPR News in Manchester, I'm Ellen Grimm.