just as important as a member of a specialty unit. there are probably people sitting in this room who said i got graffiti because nobody else wanted and it that is hard. there are officers like me and officers hired into my unit that love of job and see the value in it, see the value to the community. so you have got to have that interest or else, again, you are going to have not a successful officer. okay, so now you have found the officer and got him figured out and i talk a lot about officers, but the same applies to civilians and anybody in this audience, because my concept is anybody can be a graffiti expert. and a lot of that comes down to training. you know, where do you find this training? well, for us as police officers, we get a lot of it through approved current training classes and things certified by the state, post-classes and that is fairly consistent within a lot of states that have a group that authorizes what kind of

training an officer gets. articles and books is fairly self-explanator y and the internet. if you are curious about anything having to do with graffiti google graffiti stuff. you get on youtube and put down tag crews fighting and you get a whole bunch of videos of tag groups fighting and that is not just battling with paint, but physical altercations. the thing about the internet, sometimes people will ignore some of the major graffiti site because we're here to fight graffiti and why go to a graffiti site? a lot of guys with dedicated sites, you can read all kinds of articles and get all kinds of information written by taggers for taggers trying to train other taggers to be vandals. so don't ignore the fact there is stuff out there designed for the graffiti

vandal, because that can be of huge use for you for gaining expertise. you know, meetings. i have had some discussion with people already today. we hold a monthly task force meeting and our task force meeting pretty much encompasses everything from santa barbara down to san diego as part of our main group that we have a task force meetings with. it's been evolved over the years to be a little more formal and each time we have a meeting we do training and technology that is useful. i will talk about that technology in my class this afternoon. and it's really good because we have documented it as a member of this organization. you mind up having a documented, so when you go to court, you can show current training on a monthly basis. and in conferences. just like we're sitting here right now, i can't tell you how excited i am that these things are happening. only within the last two, three years have major conferences really come about.

probably the oldest conferences were up in canda a great group of conferences and other people have starred to pick up on this. when i started to become an officer in 1991, there were no conferences and there was virtually no interest. as dr. spicer mentioned every time it got good, i found myself out a part. then it came back together. more and more cites are realizing graffiti is a consistent crime and as dr. spicer pointed out it's a gateway crime to other activities. so having these meetings you can preclude a lot of this by dealing with just the part that they are doing graffiti damage, because they escalate to more violent and serious crimes. this training is great because we have got people from all

over the country, canada and the united kingdom and there are things that you will pick up and say i couldn't do abecause the political climate, the laws in my jurisdiction whatever, we are not allowed to do those type of things. there will be other things you go gosh, i never thought about that. i think that will work really g. i will take that back to my jurisdiction. probably over the past few years i have gotten maybe 500 people who have become graffiti experts and set up programs and almost every program is different. a lost a -- a lot of the basicks are the same. some are in mark units and it all depends how it's going to go.

you take the information and there is so much good training today and tomorrow. take the information that you want and take it back and integrate it into how you work your program. when it comes down to it, it's not important what you know. it's what you can prove in court. probably every officer sitting in this room said i had an investigation or aware of an investigation where we did the investigation and i know the guy was dirty, i know he did the crime and you send it to the d.a. and the d.a. says you just do not have enough to prove it in course. and sometimes it's that way. and in my career, i know numerous people that i believe did homicides, that we just could not take to court because we did not have enough provable evidence. i think that a lot of lay people kind of underestimate the abilities of law enforcement professionals. and basically as i have been a cop 28 years, but i think cops are some of the most adaptable, trainable guys i have ever been

around. the quality of people in the police ranks is just undeniably good. it's good that a lot of people underestimate us, because a lot of criminals underestimate us. and quite often you will finish a long-term investigation, where the crime happened six months ago, and when you are interviewing the guy, he says i never thought you would catch me and they don't think you are going to catch them, but officers are able to spend that time and do it. again, that comes from their training and working with it. you know as a law enforcement officer you are required to come up with expertise in different disciplines. of the first call you might have is a traffic accident. you have to look at the physical scene. maybe next to you go to a narcotic scenes or a wild childe abuse or any number of

things, stabbings, murders. those are independent crimes, and the officer has to have enough knowledge in all disciplines to say i can put together the initial case, so we can get prosecution on this crime. when you think about it's a staggering amount of information that the officer has too know and he will be grilled in court. you look at a specialty assignment. say for example an officer going to traffic and has a real interest in traffic and he is going to do traffic reconstruction and everything up to fatal accidents. he has to go to a scene and look at evidence and be a map-maker to create a diagram of what occurred. so look at the weight of the vehicle and apply the laws of physics and come up with a reasonable explanation of what occurred in that accident. the same thing a narcotics officers goes in and if he comes in cold, he has to learn

things like chemistry, because he may walk into a methamphetamine lab and make the decisions of how that lab will be shut down and his decisions can affect the lives of everyone walking into that scene. that is quite a bit of jump going from civilian and determining how you protection people from going into a scene like that. when we get to graffiti, there is nothing to graffiti compared to those things. when i started in the early '90s, there was little information and it was difficult to come up with consistent information. and i have dedicated a huge amount of my career to creating consistent information that we can take into court. so this is kind of a good example, because i have an hour to speak up here and anybody who knows me, nose an - knows an hour is not a whole lot of

time for me. when you go into cout and take them to trial your time is limited. you have to present simple, understandable concepts as to the foundation of your case and you have to do that to educate the jury and to educate the judge. a lot of these people have not dealt with graffiti cases. you have somebody professing to be an expert and ask the questions thateled his expertise and this guy does not know. it puts a big hole in his expertise right off. so we wanted to have something consistent. now if you probably present this information, it will essentially establish the officer as a credible expert. at that point you can start rendering expert decisions.

in trainings that you go to should be set up in such a way that every jurisdiction has an expert. sometimes you have to piggy back on somebody else's expertise. that will come in handy when he can talking to city hall people about allocation of resources, to his department about al case of resources, how he is going to set up the program and how he is going to make the investigations and how he is going to successfully take them to court? and there are experts in here, i know and i know they know if you have kind of knowledge and confront those guys a large number will confess because they are so blown away by the amount of knowledge you have. again they underestimate us. in the limited time i have, if i only have limited time i like to put this out.

this allows civilians, it allows officers to understand there are differences in the community culture and you have to understand these differences and be able to articulate them in court, if you are going to have prosecution. and by having these trainings that are consistent, it also helps clear up misinformation that is widely reported to the media, which really hurts you in court. for example, this article came out november, 20 12 a homicide in a church in the los angeles area. big story, because two church members contacted a subject who was "tagging," doing graffiti on the church. a subject emerged from a nearby vehicle, who was the lookout. shot and killed one church-goer, and wounded the other one. and big bold letters read things various newspapers read

"taggers shoot three church-goers." tagging suspect shoots church-goers, but when you go into the article and read the whole account of the incident, it's reported that these are gang members and these are gangsters putting up gang graffiti, but when people read this in the paper, that is where they are getting their input and it starts to blue the lines, what is a "tager?" what does that mean and sometime yours jury is going ohave that in your head when they talk to you. or when they listen to your case and you need to clear that up, so they understand exactly where you are coming from when you do a case. so over the years we developed five types of the graffiti. now there are a lot of ways to categorize graffiti. you might look at old-school/new school,

geographically, east coast/west coast. this categorization here is so we have a simple presentation that is easy to articulate in court, and we can explain exactly what we have got and what we haven't got. we're going talk about each one of these individually. you have got "communicative." you have "hate." you have "gang." "tagger." and "art," and this one i still consider an anomaly. it's important it's there because it then allows to you classify all graffiti in one way or another.

>> i think it ae's public and private property. i'm against graffiti. >> who can get it out the most who can be noticed the most. >> i i've seen seniors doing graffiti. >> the city is art, other people who have their names tag -- >> [inaudible] our unit there are 2 sections we are doing one is abating and others are notice of violation to private property. all the utility boxes in public right-of-way we abate. >> we abate calls that come within 48 hours. >> we are a small group in g f

graffiti. we don't have enough help. >> i have a group in town down and china town and the north tunnel. [inaudible] the graffiti we abate everything is coming up to the areas now. >> i'm willing to take it on. i think -- >> you are telling me you are ready for this? >> i think so. >> okay. >> there you go. >> all right. >> all right. >> ready to do it. let's go. >> want to get the gray signses this over here and the garbage can and normally we don't do private property since it's on the corridor route you can come with me we will use black. >> we had a lot of changes in

the graffiti unit. we do private property if someone moved we remove it and send it to the attorney's office and they take appropriate action. >> damage their property there. it's important to write the color in case they want to say what part of our house you abated the graffiti on. >> using your safety glasses the gloves. >> you got it. >> you know some places we gashi, people appreciate that. you know, a lot of timeses they say, thank you.

>> the time where it's visible. a lot of people put it on the ground. >> i like when tourists come and say, you do this for your city and you get paid for that? >> we use the [inaudible] for the holes and the retaining walls. [inaudible]. white on the fire hydrants. fire box red for the fire boxes. our brown for the pg and e poles. >> we are not painters we do our best. >> i'm assuming it has to do

with gang activity. >> if it's territorial i mind. >> in case it's gang related and they are marking our territory i would like to paint it over. >> anything with numbers like x iv or x 13 west side mob and the bay view those are gang related. with gang related or profanity we will abait it as soon as possible. >> i consider it an art. there are circles of people that form around it whether or not they should ruin public property. >> this is art work i'm for it. unless it's on someone's property and they don't want it there. judge kids with silver paint expressing their ego needs

doesn't belong on our property. >> graffiti is when you don't have permission to write anything on their property. >> eighth street is part of your regular rout? >> yes. >> everyday. >> eighth street. divisidero street. irving street. every block they going through they paint 3 or 4 streets in the block the poles the utility boxes, mailbox. >> thank you. >> okay. >> put the drop cloth. come on around. >> there you go. force for we have to remember we are not painters we abate graffiti. we are abaters not painters.

get that out of the way and keep moving. >> how many of these do you do a day? how many poles we do a day? >> yeah. >> depends on the location. may be 20. >> do you like working with the team? >> yes because i'm a people person. i like being outside and interacting with the public and i like the response we get especially from the good job we do in the community. >> goodbye.