so taggers is a very important part of the graffiti audit. when we first started the audit mark went on his observe and he was new to graffiti so him and his assistant did their best to log the tags. what we wanted to do was try and see if we could increase the percentage of tags that were identified. so two bylaw officers accompanied them throughout the audit and they assist with identification of taggers. our rate for identifying taggers has gone up to 70 percent through the audit so the information we are able to gather in terms of intell is critical in terms of enforcement efforts. last year's audit, 2011, ome and iran were two of the taggers arrested and focused on by the edmonton police service based on what's going on through an every day basis, brute and chrome, which are two of the most prolific taggers we have right now, that is the focus the edmonton are going

we've even had taggers tell on other taggers. which is kind of funny. the rewards range from $75 to $250. like i said, we have a board that sits on it and he check off different things and how dangerous it was for that person telling the other. it's p just for kids. it's all over the city. we have billboards all over the city that say this is our program, call it, we can get you money, 75, $250. the other thing is i have these little green cards i carry with me. when i'm outlooking at -- doing graffiti. don't tell anything. when i'm looking at graffiti, i feel like a homeless guy sitting out there. they could use extra bucks. i give them the card. did you see who did is that? yeah, punk kid, blah, blah, blah. go to the pay phone right there, call 911 if you see them doing it and they'll get you a reward, 75 to 250. really? yeah. so, money is money, man. [laughter] >> i get them to help me out as well. this is our phone number. these are the things we need to know. this is our program, this is how -- these are the things we did to mandate it. the suspect

for taggers trying to train other people to be better vandals. so don't ignore the fact there's stuff out there for the graffiti vandal because that can be of huge use to you. meetings, we hold a monthly task force meeting and our task force meeting pretty much covers everything from santa barbara down to san diego is our main group we have a task force meeting with. we share ideas, it's evolved over the years, become more formal. now each time we have a meeting we try to do some new training or talk about the technology available, i will talk about the technology in my class this afternoon. it's really good because we document it because when you go to court, you can show training on a monthly basis. conferences, i can't tell you how excited i am these are happening. only in the last two or three years have these major conferences come about. the one up in canada, they were a great group of conferences and other people started to pick up on this. when i became an officer dealing with gravanis in 1991, there were no conferences and there was virt

in canada some jurisdictions have their bylaws such that they can charge taggers with fines for doing graffiti tagging. we don't have any such ordinance in our city. graffiti is managed on the enforcement side as a crime under the criminal code of canada. so just quickly i won't go through all of our programs, i did an hour and a half so i could talk forever on our programs. but basically we have our programs for our city are divided into 4 areas. civic operations, we have two graffiti removal vans that clean graffiti on our civic property alone. we do enhanced clean up, we have a contractor that does some additional clean up on city property as well as the clean up that's done by operational departments in the city. and interdepartment coordination is key. we have an operations department, operations committee that's made up of representatives from all the operations areas in the city and through that we coordinate all of our clean up on city infrastructure and we have all of our complaints come in through 311, which is the recording for the city of edmonton for all -- any complaint,

we don't want brute knowing he's the most prolific tagger in the city. that's not to my benefit, only to his. but we will say, for example, of the top 10 taggers one has been arrested. we will make that information known in a generic way during our press conferences. >> what type of material are you using for the panels. >> the panels? >> yeah. >> we haven't determined yet what we're going to use for the panels. it will really depend what structure we end up looking it on. we're looking at 4 locations for the free wall at this time. again, everything that i've seen shows that they don't work. we're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place on this in that the public art plan was approved by city council that includes the creation of free walls so we figure better to control it as opposed to fight it because we weren't going to win the fight. again, by taking this approach we think we'll have some really good empirical data at the end of it to say, look, this is how much graffiti in that neighborhood increased over the last two years. this is how muc

guy is just a tagger, right? no, he did six burglaries in phoenix and five burglaries in glendale by his girlfriend's house. 35 guns stolen. went back and interviewed him. where did those guns go? he sold them. to who? bunch of tagger buddies. so, it go and goes and goes. and now he's got 6-1/2 years for the graffiti. he's facing up to 8 years right now for the burglary charges. so, it's not just graffiti. b feet i'm telling you, please don't believe that. * what else did i want to tell you guys? there's something. just be careful with some of these guys, especially when you deal with them out on the street. there's a couple incidences where we caught people in the act, arrest them, get their hands behind them, sure as crap they have a gun right there. so, either they have guns or they have pellet guns that look like guns. same thing as i'm going home to the family. they pull that on you. you know what you need to do. it's a getting worse. and we're doing a study -- you might be interested in talking to you about

i know taggers who are stealing and doing other crimes. i know people that have $450,000 worth of crime. >> hubris, we call it. >> i do talk to the taggers and stuff. you guys are right on and i am going to try to get oakland to do this kind of stuff. there's plenty of talented people, plenty of rappers in oakland. you guys could go back and brain wash my people to go to the schools and do this program. have you come back. >> reed cameron has been taping this whole thing. >> you guys are 100 percent, 200 percent right on. >> thank you. >> a general question on the budget, the budget item eye. >> we probably spend about $30,000 a year, so one fte what is that, a utility worker? so, you know, that's probably what we spend. >> have you (inaudible). >> are you talking about any of the kids here have experience with gravanis? i've been taking it off for 26 years. >> you know what? as a matter of fact one of our players about a year ago, he actually was a soldier in iraq, 18, 19, he went to iraq. the deal is he gt busted on a misdemeanor felony

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 thinners or anything like that. so, i'm not exposing the kids in my program to any dangerous chemicals or anyt

. * tagger look at different things on facebook. i don't know if you guys can see all the paint cans. it's got a couple assault rifles in there. 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 convenienc