September Raises Awareness of Operation Payback Anti-Graffiti Efforts
Safe & Sound has worked with the City of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Police Department, Probation and Parole, and other community stakeholders to combat graffiti through Operation Payback since 2008. Operation Payback has been very active in police districts 2 and 5 and has removed over 40,000 square feet of graffiti to date! Just this year Operation Payback has removed over 9000 instances of tagging and gang graffiti covering 14,000 square feet through more than 2000 hours of offender and volunteer hours.
Operation Payback started when several young men involved in tagging who were members of the ‘WR’ graffiti crew were arrested and sentenced to community service. Although graffiti removal was always a part of the community improvement efforts of Safe & Sound, having multiple offenders with hundreds of hours to work off became too much to do without a strong collaboration. This is how Operation Payback came to be. Having community service hours helped the young graffiti offenders avoid a felony record but they each had hundreds of hours to ‘pay back’ the community. During these hours, the offenders got to know Safe & Sound staff, law enforcement and other community residents. Through this process they gained a greater appreciation for the harm they have caused.
The work of Operation Payback is crucial to neighborhood stability. Graffiti not only destroys properties but also damages the stability of neighborhoods and attracts more criminal activity. In the month September Safe & Sound learned more about resident perspectives of graffiti by conducting door-to-door surveys with residents. The surveys are short and focused on the opinions and perceptions of graffiti, as well as knowledge of available anti-graffiti resources, such as the police and Department of Neighborhood Services, and a persons ability and willingness to utilize them. What we found from these surveys is that many residents were annoyed about the continual damage graffiti causes in their neighborhood while others had a fear of being targeted by a gang if they complained about graffiti. One concerned senior on the Southside expressed frustration with the lack of respect from youth that had vandalized a new park bench in front of his house. Many residents did not know that the City offers anti-graffiti services and that graffiti vandalism is considered to be a crime. Lastly, for some residents graffiti is so ubiquitous that it has become a part of how they view their block and their community.
Safe & Sound staff has learned a great deal from young offenders. They have watched would be taggers learn the value of community involvement as they go out on a weekly basis to remove graffiti and interact with residents. Community Partner Al Hegwood always has a positive attitude and provides them words of encouragement and resources, job leads and even a letter of recommendation for those that stand out. The police officers with whom they work alongside also get to know the young men and women and can develop a good working relationship and mutual understanding. Several of the young men have taken on a leadership roles, such as helping to integrate new members of Operation Payback and even selecting blocks where their service is needed. While not everyone that joins the crew is going to learn these lessons, many offenders have had a change of attitude as a result of their interactions and the community and they themselves are better off for.
