or engage them. i mean, because that's pretty much -- >> [inaudible]. it's not unique. trust me, it's not unique. >> [speaker not understood]. >> all right, you have another one for us, another anonymous question. >> so, this is in regards to enforcement. do you take juvenile gang bangers to paint over gang graffiti? any law enforcement? >> we do. >> do you? >> [speaker not understood]. >> take the mic, walk it over. >> tagging is tagging. if you're set for work release or work service, community service, [speaker not understood]. now, our -- when we're doing a lot of volunteers, we had to go with it because we had a nonprofit to clean up. when they did our clean up,

they were actually reformed gangsters themselves. they had opened a nonprofit and they were doing paint overs. they were pretty astute at assessing the juveniles and assessing the areas they were in. what we've done since then, we lost our nonprofit, now everybody who does graffiti, we generally send out, not the paint, we send out to strip the toilets and public parks, pick up dog poop at the dog park. pick up something that was disgusting and they don't get a chance to paint at all. we would see where they would paint over and they would forget the part with their gang and they would paint over. they would use a roller and put stuff behind. we've done that. we've only walked away from it only because we haven't got what we consider the proper supervision to go out to be able to assess the environment and the young gangsters that go out on the paint crew, they

respect the old veterans even if they've gotten reformed. they don't so much respect the city work [speaker not understood]. that's how it worked with us. >> okay, anybody else up there want to comment on that? i'm going to run over here because it's over here. had his hand up for a little while. if i could get you to stand up. >> this is a softball for dpw. i want to know where you get the funding that you give out as grant funding, let's say street smarts. is it general fund money, is there a special fee that's tied to something that goes into a fund? >> yeah, it's general fund money. the department makes a decision on programs and we earmark money for various, like the police and the arts commission and we earmark money and send it to them. a lot of times you'll find the board of supervisors members have support for various programs also.

we've gotten that after the budget was done in order to fund some of the programs. >> great. do you have another question? >> i have three more. >> you have three more up there, and anybody else going to be wanting to ask a question? okay, we'll get you lined up, then. >> let's see. this is to sharon. your capital city clean up program offers $1500 to private property owners to abate on heritage properties. what are the technical requirements to abate graffiti from heritage properties? >> i actually am not an expert in terms of the types of chemicals. so, i really captain answer that question. basically like i said before, we have our contractor on staff who is fully qualified, who is responsible for getting a letter approval through heritage for his chemical. they have to do a test with them to ensure that the products are safe for use on all heritage buildings. and so that's how we've been

able to handle our heritage buildings. >> i think most of my experience here in the states is it has more to do with the qualifications -- if it's designated listed historic property, then it tends to shift over to the qualifications have to be somebody that has a certain degree and conservation or that kind of thing. so, it's probably similar. it's some qualification type program. >> alrighty, thank you. i have a question over here. somebody get back here, if i could get you to stand up. your name is frank? >> yes. i've got two questions. one for marty and one for larry. marty, how many officers do you have dedicated to your graffiti program? and also larry, how many painters or staff is in your graffiti abatement program? >> great questions. >> well, i'm the graffiti guy,

graffiti abatement guy. [laughter] (applause) >> as far as the guys i use on my paint overs, i have a group of 3 to 4 guys and i pick them -- they're hand picked by me. i tend to pick guys who are patient, good with kids, guys who are school resource officers. that's a big plus. you know, you've got to like kids, maybe have experience in teaching, coaching, working with kids. like i said in my presentation, you don't want the guy with the rack shock and smoke mirror glasses who looks like he's working on a chain gang. you want someone who can maybe not talk to them in their own vernacular, but who can see eye to eye with them, talk to them about kid things and most of all be patient. and who can document trouble

and kind of see things on the horizon that might be issues coming up and who are familiar with the san francisco landscape. you know, i don't let just any cop come and do the overtime. very, very picky about who i get. and i get guys who are dependable and who are most of all good with kids. >> larry, part 2. >> about 18, roughly about five crews that go out total. but they remember their main focus is public, not private. so, in short that's the answer. >> [inaudible]. >> all public property. so, light poles, signal boxes. we do mailboxes, stickers, trees. garbage can.

>> trash cans, yeah. >> [speaker not understood]. >> public. >> yeah, city property. the benches in the parks. we don't do parks, but parks are done, rec and park does the benches he. we have some pretty basic colors. * so, most of our furniture is probably one of four colors. it's all going to be green. >> okay. let's see, what am i going to do? we're going to do this 15, 20 more minutes because i know mel needs to leave in a little while. we were going to go to about 4:15 but we're cut short a little bit. we'll do a ten-minute break after that and we'll kickoff some awards for people that are deserving. so, i'm going to take another question from gideon, gideon cramer, former member of the san francisco graffiti advisory board.

and let's hear what you have to ask. >> this is a follow-up question for larry. we were talking about concrete sidewalk graffiti and curbs. and your response was that that is private property or the owner -- the property owner is responsible. a number of my neighbors had asked me when they had graffiti said where do we go? technically you're responsible. so, what am i going to do? they ended up -- i said, do not paint over it. it's got to be power washed. you have to use -- that can be really expensive. they went and painted over it. and now it looks worse than the graffiti. i see it all over the city that a tag is painted over with brown paint, with whatever is available. and then it becomes a real problem because it's really hard to remove it then. so, i think that -- my thought about it, i know dpw doesn't have the financial resources, but realistically i think sidewalks even though they're

kind of that nebulous gray area where technically they're owned by the property owner, but they really are public property. and i think that's something that dpw should somehow find the funding to take care of that property because private property owners are not going to hire somebody with a power washer to come out there and do it. i just know it. i mean, i see very, very few examples of that. >> larry. >> i would agree. but as always, it's an issue of funding. we do have approved product listses on our website. so, if you run into somebody, there are some there they can use and actually work relatively well. but the ultimately cities face this all the time. you have to make decisions about what resources you have and what you can and can't do with the resources that you have. and, so, that's going to continue to be a problem. and it's always about the decisions, what you can do and

what you can't. and while it's understandable, as long as they're abating the graffiti, and i understand it doesn't look nice to have a sidewalk painted, but my reference would be tell them about the other products that are out there. and i'm not -- not all of the tags require a power washer to take it off. >> i'm going to speak as a property owner. >> go for it. >> i live in alameda. this was not graffiti, this was trees, replanting trees, they want to put a tree, who is responsible for that, sidewalks and everything. one thing they did do is they offered referrals for contractors, not just materials, but, you know, people who could do the trees or who could do the sidewalk repairs or what have you. so, that might be another option for different municipalities that help theirs. but that helped get her done. >> [speaker not understood]. >> go ahead.

>> [speaker not understood]. [speaker not understood]. they know where to actually get power washers and things like that from home depot. they offer that information to the residents and that way that is something that is also helpful. so, there is another avenue there. >> go ahead. you want to add -- >> i wanted to add to this subject. going back to ghosting, there is a same situation with sidewalks. actually, i'm a contractor so i know. you need to have a lot of power on your power washer, a specific amount of pressure in order to be able to take some of the graffiti on the sidewalks. one point i haven't heard

talked in this conference is an issue that has a lot to do with ghosting is that vandals are coming up with new concoctions of paints that they use to make it harder to take out. so, i say that graffiti abatement is a combination of science and alchemy. because every time you get to a place, a small percentage you find pigments that's like from another world almost. but just to finalize, and i understand what larry was answering. it makes sense that you cannot hold property owners liable to graffiti ghosting. but is this a point of policy that maybe could look forward? other municipalities, that whenever there is ghosting, you actually encouraging more vandalism because that is an etch that is going to stay -- my grandchildren might still see it. so, what i'm saying is i think

dpw does a great job on giving referrals on contractors, by the way, and a wealth of information about products. but the bottom line is that property owner is only going to spend so much money over and over and over and get to a point that it's just too much money. so, ghosting i think to me is dear to my heart because of this. if it stays there it's going to attract more vandalism. >> great point, thank you. jan, do you want to read another question? >> yes, this is in regards to abatement and it's something that as a city we have issues with, too, so i would like an answer. is there a product that would clean [speaker not understood] without damaging reflective coating? i've used different brands with no luck and i end up replacing the sign. so, in your experience [speaker not understood]? oh, okay. >> [speaker not understood].

i've got a sign outside my house at home. somebody tagged my sign. so, i went out there and when i got done, there was no red paint left, just a big shiny reflective piece. so, i called up the city of highland and i said, my sign looks like crap. they said that's fine. you must have one of the old signs. and 3m is putting out a material, it's being used by our city and every one of our "street signs" come down. when a street sign comes down, san beerctionv dino does it, a lot of cities in california are doing it. san bernardino. * when you wipe it off it allows you to wipe the paint off. you don't get the run and such. so we're seeing more and more of it being used in california. you still have to clean it. it doesn't keep it from sticking, but it preserves the signs, don't have to keep changing the signs. >> all right. so, i want to actually ask a

question of the attendees. was there anything about this conference that you can -- because basically we all live graffiti. graffiti is our live. we deal with it on a daily basis. anybody here come to this conference and whether it's from the panel or somebody that they spoke to here, one of the vendors that were here, that was something totally new, something you've never heard of before, something brand spanking new for you and something you want to take home with you to share with other people? chuck? >> we're launching our education program in the schools. the idea of having the kids do some artwork and then turn around and tag it in their class. so, they feel what it's like to be violated. that is so powerful, i can't wait to get home and start doing it. on the other side as a carrot, i have stickers. when you give blood like i do every eight weeks, they give me

a little sticker. that says, be nice to me, i gave blood today. [speaker not understood]. we need to do that for our clean-up people. so, when i take one of our felons, our misdemeanor kids and we go out and abate graffiti, at the end of the day i put a sticker on and says, be nice to me, i cleaned hayward today. your parents have to be nice to you and you tell them i said so. (applause) >> awesome, thank you. thank you. do you have another question up there? >> i do. >> okay, great. >> it's a rather hefty one. there is much more commercial tagging such as billboards, rap ads on buses, streetcars, structures built into sidewalks such as kiosks, news gras being, stand alone in ground billboards, and tagging by individuals. also people have become used to constant advertising. if we are wanting to make our

city more beautiful, how do we handle commercial tagging? doesn't the amount of advertising in public space affect us? does anyone want to take that? anyone want to tackle that one? >> i'll throw a little bit on that one. again, you know, the constitution has a real issue in america where we have freedom of speech. and just because something -- artwork that appears to be graffiti does not make it illegal. and the corporations know that graffiti is one of the edge things that draws youth and draws vibrance and it's a sign of being, you know, alive and active. you see it in all kinds of advertising and it's going to continue. the only way around it, i know there have been some contacts with certain corporations where they had it drawn to their attention, made a mistake and they would change. and that's the only way you can do it is dealing with the corporation itself.

and that is going to be very difficult because as you saying i don't like this versus, hey, we're selling $10 million worth of product this year and a lot of it is off of our graffiti campaign. when i show some of my stuff in -- we talk about commercial graffiti, there's a bunch of stuff in conon el, a toilet paper commercial. they had graffiti built onto each one of their toilet paper ads. they weren't getting bang for their buck and they got rid of t. there was a commercial from esther c. there was a supplement, a little orange and you ran around and saw graffiti and heard the police chasing him and stuff. i quoted that to the joe camel thing. kids look at that and think graffiti is cool. they received a lot of pressure and they pulled those ads. but you have the opposite side where you have like mountain

dew where they go out and find 10 or 12 different taggers they think are great, design custom mountain cans, extreme games is the thing they're pushing and they get a lot of input from that. they have a website and guys go out collecting cans reading about the poor vandals grew up on the mean streets, now they're artists because they have their own personal cans. we can't regulate what isn't personal constitution. if you can provide an economic impact, we as adults are looking at this and we don't want to deal with it, if you have any thought about this, contact randy campbell at no graffiti network. he's been battling against coca cola and their graffiti stuff for years and years and years. he can tell you what kind of battle that is legally. so, it's kind of the side effect of living in a free country. >> awesome, thank you.

i believe you had a question here. did you have your hand up? mine was a pretty good question. let's see what other answers we have. >> i'm the general services manager for our public works department which means i have 36 [speaker not understood] of program responsibility. and graffiti is the 36th. so, i really appreciate, especially dr. spencer and some of the other panelists who kind of help bring home some of the key points about how graffiti really is a gateway crime and how graffiti vandals escalate. and that's one, if any message i can take home, that's what i really want to so i thank you for that. omaha, nebraska. >> omaha, nebraska. you have one up there? >> i'm all done. >> do you have a question you wanted to ask? >> [speaker not understood]. >> we'll get to the sales pitches, okay. [laughter] >> okay.

anybody else here, let me come over here because we're going to start wrapping this up pretty soon because we have some awards we're going to give out. okay. i'm going to hold the mic and i'll determine how quick it's going to be, okay. [laughter] >> just to compliment the city of san francisco. i was on -- i took the muni in yesterday. and when i was on the bus in the morning, there is a repetitive announcement that went out that said, if you see graffiti, report it. and here's the phone number. it went out, i believe in three languages. that's wonderful. i think that's more key than if you hit the raid yoxtion and all that sort of media thing and grab that piece. * radio those are the people that are out there. >> awesome. if anybody has compliment for san francisco let me know because we can put that in right now. [laughter] >> alex, you live here. hold on.

let me get over to you quickly and then we'll have you -- >> the one thing that i really got from catherine's presentation that really touched me was she was telling us to go forward 2030 in term of technologies and looking back to today. but this conference with all the vendors we had here had an amazing impact on me as learning of new technologies. i really feel in the 21st century of different types of technologies. i'm not going to make any pitches here. but bottom line is we are learning and this conference to me, and i know for many of us here, it was a great learning experience. thank you. >> awesome, thank you. (applause) >> thank you. all right. if we don't have any more questions, i'm going to give it over to drew to do his little sales pitch up there. or any announcements that need to be made.

>> [speaker not understood]. >> okay, do you want the microphone? i'll hold it. i'm kidding. here you go. >> i'm obviously part of the nonprofit [speaker not understood], i have a products company. and for what it's worth, it hasn't gone to development yet. but we have a one-coat film that so far is working on traffic signs with unlimited cleanings. once it goes to market we'll let you know at the 2013 conference. we're not quite there yet, but it is close. the films can be difficult to apply on signs and very labor intensive, but the sign shops something you'll be able to apply yourself. when it comes to completion, all graffiti [speaker not understood] will get a sample. can (applause) * >> okay. so, we have a couple minutes. if there's no more questions, no more compliments, the panel, thank you so much for coming. (applause) >> it's been awesome. hopefully we'll be having

another one next year somewhere in the world. ...