A TEENAGER arrested earlier this week admitted to writing “style” and “steve” on a downtown grain silo, shown in this photo provided by The Dalles Police Department.
A TEENAGER arrested earlier this week admitted to writing “style” and “steve” on a downtown grain silo, shown in this photo provided by The Dalles Police Department.
Yet another suspected tagger was arrested by The Dalles city police early Tuesday morning, and was booked on 31 counts of applying graffiti.
The 15-year-old, who had also been arrested in 2013 and 2014 for the same crime, cooperated in a statement to police, said The Dalles police Sgt. Jamie Carrico, who has spearheaded work on the spate of graffiti in town in recent months.
Police have made a number of arrests in recent weeks connected to graffiti, including two on Easter Sunday and two March 27.
The two arrested March 27 “cooperated in the investigation, which led to probable cause to arrest” the 15-year-old on Tuesday, Carrico said.
Among the charges, the youth is accused of spray-painting the word “style” and “steve” in several locations, including on the grain silos downtown.
The youth was arrested at his residence at 1 a.m. Tuesday on 31 counts each of applying graffiti, second-degree criminal trespass and second-degree criminal mischief.
Carrico has interviewed the suspects and asked them why they did it. They said “they’re artists. They want to spread their art.”
Carrico said one of the teens arrested March 27 had “given” his particular style of tagging to another tagger “and now that kid is using that tag. It’s a weird mentality.”
One of the youths arrested March 27 told Carrico he tagged the word “trane.” “I said, ‘why trane?’ He said he didn’t know. ‘I just made it up and I went from trane to debt.’”
But the youth pronounced “debt” as “debit.” So when Carrico corrected him, saying, “That’s not debit, that’s debt,” the kid responded, “whatever.”
Carrico said the rash of graffiti has been “frustrating.
“Yeah, this isn’t the crime of the century but it’s causing a lot of people a lot of heartache because they’re trying to make this town better. The IOOF building was a real heartbreaker. They spend over $20,000 to have it refaced and cleaned and ‘DB’ comes along and sprays over it?”
A 19-year-old from Lyle, Jones William Thomas, was arrested earlier this year in connection with that instance of tagging, when a stylized ‘DB’ was painted on the building.
Carrico said police are still looking at a few more juveniles as tagging suspects.
However, they now feel they’re getting a handle on the graffiti problem.
“I want whoever reads this to know it’s not tolerated and we’ll do whatever we can to solve it,” he said.
He appreciated that a number of arrests have resulted from citizen tips.
As to why he ended up coordinating the department’s efforts to tackle the graffiti problem, Carrico said, “I noticed it was rampant and so I just started working with [Officer] Amanda [Fedunok] and trying to put them together.”
Fedunok created a spreadsheet to help track reports of graffiti, he said. “Amanda’s done a really good job and the people that have caught these kids, “[Sgt. Dan] Nelson and [Officer Joe] Lick and those guys have done awesome.”
“Catching them red-handed, no pun intended, is always a really good feeling because they’ve always got paint on their hands,” Carrico said.
When police interview the victims of graffiti, Carrico said the typical theme is “frustration. Here they’re trying to keep a nice house or nice fence or whatever and these kids come along.
“They come out to mow their yard and they see their fenced got tagged.”
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