of graffiti but we weren't seeing any less graffiti. so, again, the graffiti is becoming concentrated into those locations. it's important for us to be able to know that in terms of how we're addressing our graffiti enforcement and programming efforts. so this is a map, just mapping out the results. so we're seeing a trending down in terms of the location and so next year will be very important for us it note to see where we go. are we continuing to trend down in locations? again, that would help us in terms of doing wipe outs and some of our maybe community murals in some of those high pockets areas or is the graffiti going to continue to stagnate in that area. in our graffiti index, just as i mentioned before so we are examining the observations providing a numerical observation of the number of hectares in each area. in our hot spot we are fieplding there is more graffiti in the hot spots compared to the random areas. so that tells us we can rely on the calls coming in -- i don't think i have any other maps so i can turn that up so w

so the original dots reflect where the graffiti was and the intensity of the graffiti that occurred in 2011. so the larger the dot, the more intensity the graffiti was at that particular location. the blue dots indicate how much graffiti or what the graffiti was at each location in terms of the incidents for 2012. so you can see from here, it's not -- i was hoping for a better visual, but in here in the hot spot neighborhood, this is one example where the hot spot neighborhood isn't as significant as the random area. the random area is showing more graffiti vandalism than the hot spot neighborhood, but the intensity is pretty clear. if we're going to tackle a neighborhood we need to be looking here, we need to be looking in here. so it's been very beneficial in terms of where we should be looking in terms of our programming. this is another example of another neighborhood where it was the complete opposite, it was very clear that the random area isn't as much of an issue as the hot spot area in that neighborhood and there's hardly any tagging done in the random area in 2012. so the lar

is graffiti. our by law in vancouver states that even if you give an artist permission to put up graffiti on your wall, it has to go. they don't permit graffiti on your walls. whether that's in a mural or whether that's just a tag on your wall. so, even if it is done with permission, with consent, if somebody complains or if one of our by law officers come by, it has to go. and it's one of those very clear definitions of graffiti versus art and that's how vancouver has been doing it. i hope that helps a little bit. >> thank you. yeah, i think here in san francisco the difference between graffiti and art is the permission. i hope i appreciate our anonymously written questions. [laughter] >> all right. anybody else have an answer to that one? so, we'll move on to the next one. i'll take somebody from the audience and come back here. good, i'm seeing some hands go up. we'll go with you, if you want to stand up. >> my question is about liabilities. if you're doing something that the original tagger, t

try to make them aware of what's gang graffiti and what's tagger graffiti. either way it's going to be dangerous. there is a lot of violence in the taggers. they get into fist fights. i've arrested tagers with knives and brass knuckles. i've heard stories of guns being taken off tagers. it is a violent culture or has aspects of violent culture in it. you need to educate people on that. when you're going -- when you're painting over someone's graffiti, that could be seen as the ultimate disrespect. and you could be exposing yourself to a lot of danger. that's one of the reasons why we have officers going out with juveniles. now, the good thing about doing paint overs is it's not a signature. that's a blanket of paint covering graffiti. so, thor just going to know that i directed them to do that. and they can, they can address me if they have any problems with the fact that i told somebody to paint over them. you know, i'm not putting a tag there. it's city property. and as far as the type of paint we use, we don't use aerosol paint. we don't use solvents or t

we've been basing how much graffiti we've seen on thest estimates from the graffiti audit. we've take every operational department and again efts estimate it. that way we track all the graffiti in our individual program areas. i could tell you exactly how much graffiti was cleaned in a wipe out, in a professional cleaning program and then take the number of notifications that come in. this year we cleaned about 50,000 square feet of graffiti. >> last question, i'm not trying to hog everything. you already ask eds your question, i see you over there. now i forget what i was going to ask because i was so engrossed and trying to hurry up and squeeze it in. after the audit do you go out there and actually clean up the graffiti? >> yes. well, we don't go out and specifically clean it, but because of the bylaw officers the company, the auditor out there, they create notifications that go out to the property owners. because we do the audit at the end of the season when it's too cold to start cleaning, so notifications are sent out to them in the spring to remove their graffiti but

where we are at zero graffiti. i spent a lot of time as a neighborhood activist. like many of you, i spent many hours in neighborhood cleanups, using different chemicals to deal with graffiti; as a small business owner person i heard from hundreds of merchants. as a prosecutor i'm glad i don't recognized any of you. i recognize how difficult it is for the police and judges to prioritize. graffiti needs to be treated seriously. i want to thank those of you who were part of the 2009 program. we have an amazing rewards program; a graffiti advisory board to help us innovate. we feel that the best ideas are in the heads and the brainchilds of people around the world. how many are from california? how many from the east coast? welcome. i hope it's a -- in the west coast. how many are from the midwest and the south? thank you for coming. how many from canada? welcome to all of you. anyone from across the pond, europe? sir i welcome you to san francisco. i want to thank all of the city staff here lead by -- the department

graffiti. so, graffiti is not defined. it doesn't say that it slashes or it doesn't describe it in that nature. and it doesn't speak to permission either. the by law is written such that it's under community standards 14600 with respect to community standards and buildings that are considered a nuisance. there's a specific statement in there, i don't have it in front of me unfortunately, with respect to graffiti. and, so, i guess the question, then, -- question is, do we ever have trouble with property owners saying, well, i want to have this piece of graffiti on our property and i don't feel it's a nuisance and i'm not going to remove it? and we haven't had any problems actually whatsoever with our graffiti by law being challenged. how the by law works is that our by law officers, any graffiti that comes up is at their discretion. so, whether they determine what is on the property is a nuisance and it allows us to keep our mural programs running. it allows us to look at individual situations.

>> 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

graffiti. you don't have to use arrow zoll. it's expensive. it's anywhere from 8 to $14 a can wherever you get it. and you also have to then worry about protecting the eyes, the hands and the proper respirator which could be 35 to $50 apiece per youth. so, to me it's a really expensive way to engage that graffiti side of the artistic or creative behavior. at the same time, montana wants their name out there. so, if you can't montana and say i'm getting 15 kids together to do graffiti art, can you give me some stuff? i need like a basic color palate. i don't see why they wouldn't give it to you whether your message is condoning graffiti or permitting it or not, you don't have to tell montana. so, if it is something you want to work with, i think you could get -- i think you could actually be quite successful getting quite a bit of paint and supplies. sea >> [speaker not understood]. >> certainly. certainly, and i feel the same way about cigarettes. >> thank you. all right. gen, do you have anoth

style of the graffiti. each piece of graffiti was given a characteristic or determination what you were seeing for the graffiti. again, you can't analyze each piece so we created categories that would identify each piece of graffiti so we could compare it from one location to the next. for example, plain text, an artistic tag, bubble outlines, whether they had time to do just the outline, if they had time to do one color, two color, or whether it was a full throw up piece. we categorized the information that way. the descriptor of the graffiti, we catalyzed whether it was hate, whether it was a sentence sill, whether it was vulgar, a political motif, it whether it was racist, all those characteristics were recorded in a data base that were kept on a laptop as they went neighborhood through neighborhood. the target category was also determined. if they could determine if it was on city property or government or private, that information was logged so we could have a sense of where the taggers were targeting.

graffiti tracker, you take the pictures gps enabled. it sends it back to graffiti tracker. graffiti tracker puts it in a database for us. i have it on my phone. they give us these phones that have all of our apps on it for graffiti. graffiti tracker here on my phone. a sewer, like we were looking at earlier, say sewer painted. they take the gps enabled camera. they take a picture, that gets sent in here. i have a ton of things you can do on this thing where you can find out sewer hit at 37th street indian school road 52 times. and just like you were showing in the presentation how different areas are with the little graphs, they put the whole graph for you. it's all done for you so you don't have to do it. go ahead. >> so, they identify the tager so they can make sure [inaudible]? >> yeah, we don't. >> you can search it like i want sewer, put search sewer [speaker not understood]? >> i'll show you right after this. it's exactly right. they have people who are trained to read graffiti. how many people can read all this crap that you see? it's taken me a couple years to final

of the stencil graffiti. those create a little bit more of a challenge for us in terms of prosecution. it is definitely something marty and i stay in contact about. everything is coming up. there's always changes. so, it is something we're trying to address as it's coming up. >> i'll add one thing to that, too. the stencils that are going on the sidewalks, and if they have permission by the property owner to do them. we have goldfish all up and down haight street. but permission by the property owners. so, that goes into it also. >> there will be a yellow brick road somewhere, too. we're going to go -- do you want to respond to this? >> i'll respond very briefly. my experience with graffiti vandals is that they are actually quite smart and adaptable. if they know that the graffiti on the sidewalk is staying because something has changed their responsibility or accountability, they will target your sidewalks. what i would say is don't wait for people to report it. because they may not know that it's not permis

graffiti is just -- graffiti -- those guys aren't that bad. we're seeing a lot of -- in the state of -- in the city of phoenix, not the state of arizona, but the city of phoenix, we don't recognize tagging crews yet as gangses. they don't filth our criteria for dealing that. but if you look at it, they do. i can prove to you that it's the same stuff as when when you document a gang memorandum ben bernanketioner they're doing the same stuff. a lot these guys get jumped into a tagging crew. three ways to get into a tagging crew i know from speaking and interviewing all these guys. you either get jumped in, you get bombed in, which means they go around the city and bomb, or if you're a girl, you get sexed in. who does that, too? gangs. they do the same stuff. and we have a big syndicate that just went out. we just finished it up with a tagging crew. beer runs and cigarette runs from convenience stores and we have [speaker not understood] in phoenix. seems like every corner there's a 7-eleven. we call them circle k. they're doing that. it was all

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 h