Graffiti Blooming In Moose Jaw

Flowers aren’t the only colourful things blooming this spring.

Graffiti is also popping up around the community costing property owners irritation, time and expense.

During the media scrum at Wednesday afternoon’s Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners meeting acting Chief of Police Rick Johns said graffiti is cyclical in nature.

Graffiti reappears on a wall that was painted to cover up a previous graffiti attack - submitted photo

“It does seem to go in cycles. We’re always tracking that. When our officers attend to these sites whe we’re called we will catalogue the graffiti,” Johns said.

The catalogued graffiti is then compared to other graffiti in the community looking for commonalities or links as graffiti producers often leave their marks or signatures on pieces.

“We do look into those matters and try to catalogue it so if we find a link we investigate it,” he said.

He pointed to a former program they had called Project 401 where students we go down and paint on areas that has been used for graffiti, and there was some kind of ethics or honour amongst graffiti artist that they would not go down and graffiti with the students had painted.

“It might be a code of ethics between taggers where they do not tag on other tags artwork… It worked really good.”

Johns said they would have to work with the victim of the graffiti.

Under City of Moose Jaw bylaws property owners are on the financial hook for removing or covering up graffiti. Once noticed the City will issue a 30 day notice regarding the graffiti.

“There are two direct streams. Let’s figure out who did it and let’s clean up what happened,” he said.

Commercial property owners contacted by MJ Independent called graffiti a nuisance that costs time and money to fix. Oftentimes the graffiti is profane and embarrassing.

It’s a problem Johns can see asking for anyone with information to contact police to help apprehend the taggers.

“We’re always looking for tips from the public, “ he said.