How the City of Kent Deals With Graffiti

by Justin McKinney and Jacob Runnels

 

When you think of Kent, what are the most eye-grabbing attractions that help define the city?

 

For some, it could be the walkways in Brady’s Leap Park or the mural under the bridge in the Haymaker Farmers’ Market while for others, it could be the graffiti in Kent, such as on the wall under the Franklin Mills Riveredge Park bridge, below the Pufferbelly restaurant. There’s graffiti in many parts of the town, but as to whom will clean it up is determined by who owns the property.

 

“The ordinances say that if you can see it from the public… and it’s on private property, it’s up to the private property owner to remove it,” said Sheri Chestnutwood, administrative assistant to the Kent service director. “However, we have problems with the wall by the railroad… and that’s the owner (CSX Railroad Corporation) to remove.”

 

Chestnutwood said while it is up to the private property owner to get rid of graffiti on their property, the city can help give them free materials, such as quick-application chemical solutions like Tagaway and Taginator, if they sign a release form. While private property owners are responsible for their own properties, Chestnutwood said the city doesn’t actually hire people to clean graffiti from city property, but rather it’s done by volunteers, who are either good Samaritans or fulfilling community service requirements.  

 

“We’ve had more success with groups that just like to volunteer,” she said. “We’ve told volunteers to not do anything they consider ‘unsafe’.”

She said the graffiti in the parks is under the park commissioner’s jurisdiction. However, for other spots in Kent such as the walls near the railroad, she said Kent doesn’t have much authority on the removal of its graffiti.

 

“I’m sure they’re aware of it,” she said. “We have trouble enforcing the railroad to fix tracks that are in bad condition with asphalt, so if it’s working for the railroad and they’re not having any problems transporting their goods, then they usually turn a blind eye to [the graffiti].”

 

While the city’s public graffiti problems are managed by the Public Service Department and private graffiti problems are resolved by the owner, that leaves the city’s Parks and Recreation services to clean up graffiti in the parks.

 

Sam Tuttle, the parks supervisor for the Parks and Recreation Department, said his workers will clean graffiti themselves, often with brush-on solutions, paint or through powerwashing. He said his crew has to clean up graffiti “probably around 30 times” a year.

 

“We can’t prevent it… unless you educate the public,” he said. “We have found that, if you go in and clean it up as fast as you can… and continually clean it wherever it is in high-profile places, [tagging] seems to slow down in those spots.”

 

Tuttle said that, while the materials are cheap to purchase for cleaning graffiti, graffiti can be cumbersome to deal with because of how Tuttle has to devote time to send crew members to clean tagged spots. However, he said his department sometimes works with the police to get community service volunteers to clean up the tags.

 

Kent police officer Lieutenant Michael Lewis said a graffiti crime is considered as a second or third degree misdemeanor offense but doesn’t fall under vandalism all the time, as that would involve the severity of the damage caused by the tagging. He said tagging can mostly be considered as criminal damage or mischief.

 

Lewis said there are moments where catching taggers is more difficult to do, such as when the bars are closing or when the police have to look out for drunk drivers. In those instances, he said they take a higher priority than looking for graffiti.

 

“We vary our patrol techniques and take extra measures to try to prevent [graffiti],” he said. “The safety of everyone comes before property crimes… but we do what we can to get people into those parks down walking behind businesses… looking for graffiti [and other property crimes]. It’s always a balancing act.”

 

Lewis said the Kent police take pictures of each instance of graffiti in Kent so they can analyze the art style or signature a tagger will leave behind and investigate who could have painted it. He said he has caught people in the recent past because of this method.

 

Chestnutwood and Tuttle agree that solving graffiti crimes is nearly impossible, as they are spurred by “random acts.” However, graffiti prevention and education is something they advocate, and the initiatives conducted by organizations like what Main Street Kent does for the city will be what leads to graffiti prevention and removal.

However, for entities like CSX Railroad Corporation, it’ll take a while to get situations like that resolved.

“Let’s say we had an organization who wanted to clean [the graffiti] and the railroad agreed, then there would be some costs to that,” Chestnutwood said, describing how railroad flaggers would have to be employed, which would be paid for by the city. “The railroads are to just transport… I don’t know if they’re consciously mindful of what they’re passing by on the tracks.”

 

Chestnutwood and Tuttle said they rely on people reporting graffiti in the city and parks, and Chestnutwood said some cases can be complaint-based.