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Protecting Skate Parks and Splash Pads

Protecting Skate Parks and Splash Pads

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A skate park and a splash park are great assets to the community and should be protected from vandalism and graffiti.

The community skate park and splash pad add a lot of entertainment and outdoor exercise for both youth and adults.  Outdoor exercise is known to decrease the probability of illness and depression. What better opportunity for outdoor exercise than a skate park or a splash pad?  It is exercise in the disguise of play and socialization.

The time, energy, and cost in creating a skate park and splash pad can be daunting, but it is well worth the effort.  According to the Tony Hawk Foundation, the average cost to build a skate park runs between $200,000- $400,000, with an additional cost to maintain.  According to Chelan County, the estimated cost to create a splash pad is between $800,000-$2,000,000, also with an additional cost to maintain.

With investing so much into a park, it is essential to protect it.

Unfortunately, both skate parks and splash pads are frequently targeted with graffiti and vandalism. This crime is ghastly as it affects the entire community.  Additional unfortunate details are graffiti and vandalism bring down the property values and usher in more devastating crime into the community, such as drugs and violence.  Graffiti and vandalism bring down the entire community’s quality-of-life.

Therefore, it is important to protect your parks from vandalism and graffiti, these quality-of-life offenders. It is also imperative you protect your dollar asset and the hard work that went into building those awesome parks the community loves.

How to protect your park’s assets:

  • Maintain adequate lighting at night
  • Post operating hours
  • Enclose the park with fencing
  • Install Park Vandalism Cameras– designed specifically to stop quality-of-life crimes

Traditional video cameras do not stop quality-of-life crimes.

What is your city doing to protect your great park achievements?

 

How to Solve the Graffiti Problem

How to Solve the Graffiti Problem

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Graffiti is a community problem affecting people from all walks of life.   Nuisance crimes are a problem for all cities varying in the crimes and magnitude.  Unfortunately, graffiti causes residential and business property values to be less, invites more crime, and increases urban decay.  So, what is a community to do?

The United States Department of Justice printed a pdf defining Community Policing.  In the pdf, problem solving is:

  • Scanning: Identifying and prioritizing problems
  • Analysis: Researching what is known about the problem
  • Response: Developing solutions to bring about lasting reductions in the number and extent of problems
  • Assessment: Evaluating the success of the responses
  • Using the crime triangle to focus on immediate conditions (victim/offender/location)

Once the community has identified the area or “hot spot” of graffiti, a solution to stop or deter the graffiti is the next step.  Perpetrators are dangerous so this can be tricky.  How can the community get involved but not be put at risk to gang members or violent individuals?  The best way to approach this problem is to report the area to the neighborhood enforcement agency.  Community policing requires a partnership for example between the community, public works and the police. Some communities even have volunteers for this type of crime and the support of non-profit organizations or private business.  The key is the partnership.  The law enforcement agencies are much more effective in a city where they have the help and partnership from the community.

Preventative measures should include:

  • Bright lights, which shine in the shadows
  • Legislation with high penalties
  • Community service for perpetrators
  • Using social media to ask the community for help
  • Using social media to spread the word and advertise the penalties
  • Using anti-graffiti cameras to stop and deter
How to Stop Graffiti

How to Stop Graffiti

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The crime of graffiti is an ever-growing problem in every major city in the United States. You can easily spot this public eye-sore lining the once blank walls of businesses, in our alley-ways, on trash cans, and even mailboxes. More often than not, the most common form of graffiti is placed in areas meant to designate a specific gang’s territory, acting both as a sort of physical marker and as a warning to other neighboring gangs to stay out. This type of graffiti is most often found in the more metropolitan areas, or areas of a city that’s been prey to urban decay.

Another common form of graffiti is that of a “street artist”. These so-called artist’s don’t have any gang affiliation and often spray-paint large murals depicting some sort of ethnic or urban scene in public areas or on private property. While many of these “street artists” can display some artistic credibility, their choice of canvas is just as illegal as those of gang graffiti artists.

Of the many problems that the crime of graffiti can cause, the cost and resources of graffiti abatement can quickly add up. In 2014, the city of Los Angeles, California paid $7 million to clean up roughly 32.4 million square feet of graffiti-adorned public areas. This money had to be culled from other budgets that may have benefitted other public programs run by the city. Once these instances of graffiti are removed, they quickly reappear moments later.

Because recurrences of graffiti happen so often, the problem is met best with a means of quick abatement and followed by measures designed to prevent its repetitive qualities. While the crime of graffiti happens most often at night and when the possibility of being seen is low, ideally-placed anti-graffiti cameras are an excellent substitute when civilian or security personnel oversight can’t be accomplished or afforded. In addition to these graffiti cameras, utilizing social media sites, such as Facebook, to help identify suspects and educate the public on the consequences of graffiti are steps in the right direction to help stifle the occurrence and recurrence of the crime of graffiti.

Graffiti Prevention

Graffiti Prevention

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It is no secret that most large cities are a hot-spot for graffiti.  In addition to gangs using graffiti to “mark” their territory, there is also a host of “artists” who belong to an underground “street art” scene.  What these gangs and so-called “artists” don’t seem to take into consideration, however, is the cost and resources needed to clean up their graffiti.

For instance, In 2014, Los Angeles city workers cleaned up 32.4 million square feet of graffiti, or the equivalent square footage of 562 football fields.  Due to the vast and large nature of the City of Los Angeles, this comes as no surprise.  At this rate, Los Angeles City spends roughly $7 million per year of city money to clean up graffiti– money which would be better spent on other programs that benefit the citizens.

Some cities pay graffiti abatement crews to clean up the mess daily. Although necessary, these crews are often working in vain, as the freshly cleaned-up graffiti seems to return as quickly as it’s scrubbed off or painted over, functioning as a sort of budget-money-black-hole, fueled by more than 100,000 civilian complaints of graffiti sightings.

One worthy idea devised by some cities, is to “punish” caught and convicted taggers by making them clean up their own mess and repaint the structures as a form of rehabilitation.  However, this is only working, if the graffiti vandals are caught and convicted.  What about the countless taggers that whiz by under the radar, committing graffiti on a daily basis, uncaught and therefore undisciplined?  This triggers the question, what are cities doing regarding graffiti prevention?  

It is clear, it is time for the cities to approach the problem of graffiti with a new set of eyes, due to the current situation behaving not unlike a recurring nightmare with no end in sight. The repetitive nature of current means of dealing with graffiti is like a game of cat and mouse, handled on a day-to-day and case-by-case basis.  Without a preventative plan of action and a graffiti camera, this game, sadly, is certain to continue.