The Gainesville Police Department has been working for the last month to reduce graffiti in town.
After a string of artists painted tags on local businesses in mid-January, GPD Chief Tony Jones assigned a group from the department’s gang unit to track and catch graffiti artists. Before January, the department did not have a team dedicated to cleaning up graffiti.
In one evening, a group caused about $100,000 worth of damage to public and private property, said Robert Koehler, a GPD specialty unit lieutenant.
“They were armed to the teeth with paint,” he said.
GPD has arrested 11 artists, including three members of a group called the Sons of Graffiti, from Jan. 19 to Jan. 24. Koehler said he expects the department to make more arrests in the next couple weeks.
GPD has about 1,000 images of vandalism on file, Koehler said, but the unit is still looking for leads on some graffiti tags. For a gallery of graffiti images provided by GPD, visit alligator.org.
Contact Tyler Jett at tjett@alligator.org.
Graffiti appears on a trash bin in the parking lot of The Courtyards apartment complex.
