Fulton Neighborhood

Graffiti Update

Sep 19, 2000

Sgt Rick Duncan, the Police department?’s anti-graffiti coordinator, attended the Safety Committee?’s August meeting with an update on the new procedures for reporting graffiti. (Call 673-2090 between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.) The police received over 500 reports of graffiti damage, the vast majority from south Minneapolis, during the first four weeks of the system?’s operation. These reports are being logged in the CODEFOR database. The SAFE Team will provide the Committee with a monthly graffiti report map for the neighborhood.

At the beginning of August, Sgt Duncan established a Top Ten graffiti offender list. So far, seven of these offenders (including POKE, ZINE, and AWOL, who have caused significant damage in Fulton) have been identified and three have been arrested. Duncan says that about 90% of the graffiti cases under investigation involve juveniles. He admitted that the new police program is suffering from a lack of resources: right now, all of the reports are being taken and documented by Duncan, a clerk-typist, and a single community service officer. As a result of this inadequate level of staffing, it?’s taking longer than anticipated for the information to reach Solid Waste and for the graffiti to be removed.

Duncan is ready to try out new strategies to apprehend offenders and is working closely with city and county attorneys to make sure that those charged with graffiti crimes are prosecuted.

Sgt Duncan has launched a publicity campaign to educate the public about the new procedures for reporting graffiti. The Safety Committee has agreed to help by:

1) Publishing the new procedures in Fulton Neighborhood News.

2) Delivering copies of the publicity to neighborhood businesses and schools.

3) Exploring whether SAFE and city utility billing could work together to include the publicity with
water/sewage bills mailed to property owners. (Council Member Lane?’s office is helping with this.)