Brian Rudman: The writing's on the wall for graffiti vandals

Perhaps it's been the mild weather, but this winter the graffiti vandals don't seem to have slept. Not in my corner of inner Auckland anyway.

Shopfronts, house fences, lamp-posts, they're all fair game to hooded teenagers who slink about the streets spraying their territory like tomcats on the prowl.

We had a bad strike a couple of weeks back, and the local paper reports a similar epidemic around the corner in Grey Lynn and Westmere. One shopkeeper says he has to paint over the mess every weekend during the year - plus every night during school holidays.

And this despite Auckland City's much vaunted "zero tolerance" anti-graffiti programme costing ratepayers $1.2 million a year.

The programme involves council staff rushing out to paint over new attacks as soon as they occur and persuading shop owners and householders to do likewise. The graffiti fighters have also built up a databank of known signatures to try to identify the vandals.

It would be nice to think the effort is paying off, but you only have to look about the city to realise it's about as successful as the levees protecting New Orleans.

A report from the graffiti contract co-ordinator this year reveals the size of the problem.

Between February and May, 5798 sites were cleaned or painted over by the city council and 10 vandals were arrested and charged by the police. Presumably in addition, "19 juvenile vandals have been apprehended".

We're also told that "two very successful covert camera surveillance operations were conducted at the Mt Roskill war memorial and Wesley community centres".

Unfortunately that doesn't solve the problem in the rest of the city. And one suspects it hardly slows down those in the targeted surveillance areas.

What puzzles me is why we don't take the obvious route and cure the problem at source - ban the spray cans. Or at least make them much more difficult to acquire.

Why not force spray-can buyers to go through the same sort of third degree I have to these days when I visit a chemist shop to buy effective cold medication.

My desire for this medication always seems to occur on a Sunday or when I'm not near my local chemist, so I end up in a strange establishment being treated like a "P" manufacturer. Which I guess, for the greater community good, is fair enough. Though with a dripping nose and sore head, it's hard to accept at the time.

Admittedly, as far as I know, no one has had their hands chopped off or been shot at point-blank range by a spray-can wielding graffiti vandal, but the damage they do to the environment is immense.

Removing the cans mightn't stop the scourge, but it would slow down the offenders.

Talking of slowing down, grown-up graffiti pest Ike Finau continues to give the two-fingered salute to the justice and electoral systems.

You may recall how Auckland City has been battling for years to force Mr Finau to remove the forest of political signs from the front lawn of his Westmere home.

The tussle came to a head just before Christmas 2002 with Judge Roderick Joyce, QC, ruling that he would jail Mr Finau for contempt if the signs were not removed within 21 days.

But after Christmas and with Mr Finau calling his bluff, the good judge backed down, saying that Mr Finau was "a mere pawn" manipulated by others not before the court.

Mr Finau celebrated with a new sign slagging off the Governor-General.

Nearly three years on, the "pawn's" front garden is still a forest of signs, though he's moved on to bigger issues than local politics. One of the more prominent is the one cheeking Judge Joyce, proclaiming: "I beat the legal system by using ancient common law with no $$$$".

Among others is one calling on voters to "dump lazy Judith Tizard", another advising Muslims not to vote for "evil" Green and Labour, and a defamatory slur against Parliament's Speaker, Margaret Wilson.

Electoral officials visited the site after complaints on election day and toppled the signs, leaving them lying where they fell. But once they left, the signs rose again.

When grown-ups get away with it, no wonder the teenagers think it's a joke too.