King County prosecutors recently filed more than thirty criminal cases against some sixreen graffiti taggers who together have caused upward of $100,000 in property damage. They have done it by scrawling their names in spray paint and defacing billboards, murals and walls in the dead of night. Graffiti taggers have caused more than $500,000 in damage in the Seattle and Tacoma areas according to the King County prosecutor’s charges. Last year, Seattle worked to remove graffiti at 23,117 locations covering over 27,000 signs, light poles and retaining walls. In Seattle Eight-thousand, five-hundred graffiti tags were documennted along with another fifty-five more scrawled across Seattle’s roadways.

Graffiti is costing taxpayers millions of dollars. The state legislature passed a bill this year to provide one million dollars to research graffiti removal. The Seattle mayor’s office says the city saw a fifty percent spike in graffiti. The Washington State Department of Transportation spent $490,000 in 2023 to remove graffiti in the northwest region of the state, including  areas in King County. The city of Seattle spends nearly $6 million a year on graffiti removal. The State Department of Transportation  spent $1.4 million to remove graffiti from freeway walls, overpasses and signs in the past two years.. That is in addition to private efforts from property owners, small businesses, neighborhood advocacy groups, and the state of Washington to remove graffiti. Most of the paint is stolen from home improvement stores, according to the King County Prosecutors

The response to the problem has been to spend the millions for clean up by painting over the graffiti with fresh paint. In most cases, the graffiti was almost immediately replaced with new graffiti. The practice of paintingf over the graffiti is no remedy at all.  The idea of covering the graffiiti with  paint as a solution fails because it simply offers a fresh canvas that invites more graffiti. It has been pointed out that this is because the taggers want to have their name on the work. It’s been said that “They want to be remembered. It’s the same impulse that makes you want to have a tombstone after you die or name a building after yourself.”

The violators are generally a determined group. Some taggers travel a a long  distance and even bring a small crew of helpers. Spray paint is typically used for simple tags on light poles, newspaper boxes and other surfaces, but more elaborate, large-scale tags are painted on with rollers, often in multiple colors. for example, the Seattle police arrested Cameron O’Neill, a 28-year-old Federal Way man who was caught by a patrol officer while spray painting a 6-foot-tall by 34-foot-long tag on an offramp locations.

Imagine being a tourist visiting Seattle for the first time, excited to see the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and all the charm the city has to offer. But as soon as you hit the freeways, you’re greeted not by sweeping views of the skyline, but by miles of spray-painted graffiti on every wall, sign, and overpass. Instead of clean streets and iconic landmarks, tourists are treated to a grimy, graffiti-covered landscape. But, in addition, they are forced to navigate around the tents of the homeless on downtown sidewalks.  It’s not just embarrassing—it’s a terrible first impression for a city that prides itself on beauty and innovation.

In my view, the right solution is to devote the majority of money being spent to clean up the graffiti instead on arresting and jailing the violators until the vandalism has stopped. Using fresh paint cover up has clearly been a waste of time and encourages more the same.  Not enforcing the law only results in more crime Shakespeare said it accurately:

“We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
their perch and not their prey.”

Government should  rescue our I-5 Highway and the once beautiful Seattle from vandals with paint.