Hotline makes quick work of tagging.

Graffiti affects us all. We see it on our walls, sidewalks, overpasses and even sometimes, our homes. Gone are the days when such acts were mostly relegated to outside areas.

While the Sheriff’s Department has relentlessly tried to track down taggers and catch them in the act, much graffiti ends up on city-wide surfaces everyday. It’s hard to catch taggers in the act. It is not hard, however, to report when you see graffiti that’s already been done. And that may help the problem just as much as catching them.

The City has a graffiti hotline at 25-CLEAN, and once reported, a graffiti stain can be cleaned up in some cases by the next day.

Councilmember TimBen Boydston has been a witness to the demoralizing effect cleaning up graffiti has on the taggers. He and a group of other volunteers made it a point to clean up graffiti around the downtown Newhall area on a daily basis. The more they cleaned and re-painted, the less they’d find new marks.

KHTS has been told that nothing pleases taggers more than to see their own work. It is for that reason that simply removing the graffiti does wonders to help combat the problem. KHTS will not print pictures of graffiti.

Plus, Sheriff’s Deputies track graffiti for details. That way, when a tagger is caught in the act, their specific tagging can be linked to others and therefore they are tried for all of the work they’re responsible for.    

This problem has been growing fast in Santa Clarita. It will not go away on its own, and this is your chance to take an active role in protecting your home from crime and maintaining the area’s value. Remember that a safer Santa Clarita is just a phone call away.