Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

He drew his weapon of choice,  a big black felt pen, from a jacket pocket.

He looked around sheepishly, guiltily, and then left his ugly scrawl on top of a public rubbish bin on The Strand. It was broad daylight, middle of the week, and within a ‘hullo, hullo, hullo, what’s going on here then’ of the Central Police station. Shameless twat!

‘Kase’ I think it reads. An almost illegible ‘Kase’. Likely not his real name, and I hope not.

Because I would hate to give him one second of the notoriety he seeks.

It wasn’t art, nor graffiti; it was tagging, vandalism.

And it’s an offence.

A punishable one.

Because ‘Kase’, graffiti vandalism, tagging, defacing, can get you a $2000 fine... and/or a community based sentence. You could be made to clean up your mess, or other unpaid work, or house arrest, or curfews, or undergoing therapy or treatment.

Some of each would probably make people feel better.

Worsening problem

Look around the city. If you see one tag, you start seeing them everywhere.

The Tauranga City Council says: “Yes, graffiti is a worsening problem for council”.

A worsening problem for all of us – because it’s in our faces. We see our city being disfigured, defaced, mutilated. Unnecessarily. And it’s costing a chunk of our rates to remove just some of it – the figures are $156, 473.01 for the year to June 2021, $160,466.33 for the year ended June 2022; and $180,361.65 for the last financial year – the thick end of half a million bucks for the last three years.

Your money, my money that could be better spent.

Seems tagging breeds tagging, tags attract taggers. Because a couple of other ne’er-do-wells have since added their scrawls to the top of our rubbish bin. Bloody lovely!

At least the original scrawl had just a modicum of flair. If I think about it, the signature was stylised, it was cursive and considered, an icon-type signature. I could see some artistic endeavour, but misplaced artistic endeavour. And I read somewhere that graffiti is better than plain boring walls, that a city without graffiti is a city without soul.

But unfortunately for taggers, most people won’t see past the damage. Tagging’s a crime against property. It’s our town, we value our town and so it’s a crime against us and our property.

And we intensely dislike tagging because taggers are perceived to be bored and rebellious layabouts whose handiwork is vandalism, a criminal act associated with a gang element, petty crime, broken windows and a community that doesn’t care.

But we do care – and that’s why I confronted the 20-something year-old defacer by the rubbish bin while he still had the black felt pen locked and loaded. What the hell did he think he was doing? Why did he think what he was doing was alright? Who was going to clean up? Who was going to pay?

He obviously didn’t think he owed an explanation. He just shrugged his shoulders and slunk away into the undergrowth to deface and vandalise another day. 

I handled it all wrong of course.

I was too busy venting my outrage and indignation, when I should have just called the cops immediately. That’s the advice, because there’s a better chance of police taking action if they catch the offender in the act. And I was ill-advised to confront. I should have rung the cops from a safe distance. Regardless, I don’t think ‘Kase’ with his big black marker pen was of a mind to hang around waiting to be arrested. He certainly didn’t look like he had $2000 in his kick to pay a fine.

But he was out defacing the city in the middle of the day, so he has time to do some community based work.

Anyhow, mea culpa, I bungled it. I should have called in the armed offenders squad and tracker dogs. Tauranga could have had one less tagger.

Clear message

So why did the tagger like my rubbish bin?

What was in it for him?

Well, I am told the satisfaction is from repeatedly marking a territory so it generates the most attention possible, good or bad. So a strategic or centrally located target like The Strand was perfect. Publicity only encourages the tagger, validates their offending, gives them purpose. But ignoring it hasn’t made it go away.

TCC does play hardball. It filed 20 police complaints for graffiti-related incidents last year.

Six were arrested. But information about charges and penalties is not immediately available. Watch this space.

And the TCC message is basically that we can take action against taggers by cleaning it up as soon as it happens.

Record, report, remove.

A strong community response sends the clear message that tagging won’t be tolerated.