The Santa Barbara City Council has approved more than $4,000 to renew the city police department's annual subscription to Graffiti Tracker.
The unique computer database allows law enforcement to more effectively track tagging in their communities and helps them identify those responsible for graffiti in order to make sure they are punished under the full-extent of the law and make full restitution for their crimes.
"It can show patterns, for instance we can know if a certain area is being targeted with graffiti specifically", says Santa Maria Police Dept. Lt. Jerel Haley, "another is it helps us to identify certain graffiti individuals, tag names, showing up more often and so by doing that we can kind of key in on what are the main players, who should we be looking for, what areas should we be looking in, and then when we come across somebody we know what questions to ask them."
Some favor harsher fines and even jail sentences for those caught tagging.
These people also want to make sure taggers make full restitution for the cost of removing the graffiti seeing it as senseless defacement of public and private property.
Others who work with troubled or at-risk youth say graffiti is, and always has been, an expression of local kids needing attention and support from the communities they live in.
These people support programs that put graffiti offenders to work beautifying the city or property they are accused of defacing.
