KEY POINTS:
When it comes to preventing tagging, the country's first graffiti enforcement officer, Reg Alofa, believes the best intervention is education.
With that in mind, the Avondale-based police officer has been making his way around schools encouraging young people to rechannel their artistic talents into something more positive.
To add weight to his words, Mr Alofa has taken a good friend, boxer David Tua, with him to see some of the students.
Next year he hopes to get other sportspeople on board, possibly some of the Warriors or basketball players.
Mr Alofa said taggers were usually intermediate or high school students and many were members or affiliates of youth gangs.
"What I do is go around to the schools using services of people who could perhaps make a strong impact, like David Tua."
Part of the education message is about making young people realise it's illegal to tag or bomb someone's property without their permission.
Another part is trying to refocus them - and that means getting them into murals or graffiti art rather than illegal tagging.
One example is a young boy who was caught tagging bus stops. He has now been encouraged into graffiti art - where large murals are painted on walls with the consent of the owner.
The teen has been so inspired that he drew Mr Alofa a picture which now hangs proudly on the constable's wall.
Education and refocusing only goes so far, though, and when he's not visiting schools Mr Alofa is busy photographing and cataloguing the unsightly tags that plague home owners, tenants and landlords on a daily basis.
When a tagger is caught Mr Alofa uses his discretion on the best punishment to fit the crime.
"If a kid has no previous history and he can be brought back on the right path, I get him to go and clean it off and write a letter of apology to the owner."
Since he started working as a graffiti enforcement officer about six months ago another officer has started the same job in South Auckland and further positions are expected to be filled in other parts of the country.
Having dedicated graffiti enforcement officers is a new approach for police. Now when a tagging or graffiti complaint is lodged with police in Mr Alofa's district, that's the Central Western part of Auckland, the file goes straight to him. In the past it would be dealt with by overworked frontline staff who more often than not had a range of other pressing duties.
Mr Alofa said people tended not to report graffiti as they did not think anything would be done. But he said it was important for the police to know what was happening and where.
He encourages anyone who has their property tagged to photograph it, if possible, and take the image to the police with details of when it appeared and where.
