Anti-graffiti symposium in Halifax draws police from across Canada

HALIFAX – Police officers from across Canada are in Halifax this week to tackle an issue they see in every municipality — graffiti.

The Halifax Regional Municipality and Halifax Regional Police are hosting the ninth Annual TAGS — The Anti-Graffiti Symposium — which was first held in 2005 and has since grown into a national conference.

For Const. Gerry Murney, an HRP officer who specializes in graffiti, it’s an educational opportunity for all officers.

Const. Chris Fader from the Codiac RCMP says many officers who deal with incidents of graffiti see the same tags as officers in other areas.

“People involved in graffiti, they travel a lot,” he said. “Once they finish in their city they go on tour and they move around other places, so we dealt with a crew that had tags in every province in Atlantic Canada.”

Fader says in the weeks leading up to the start of school, they saw more than 100 graffiti incidents.

“We have our problems, Is it to the extent that it is in Halifax? No, which is good,” he said. “We know we have our writers in our community and we manage them as best as we can.”

Police say removing it isn’t cheap, either. Last year, there were 1,300 reported break-and-enter incidents in Halifax, which amounted to $640,000 lost. Over the same stretch, the city spent $480,000 to remove graffiti from its own assets — and that doesn’t factor in the cost of excising it from residential and commercial properties.

Halifax Regional Police say they are seeing a gradual increase in the number of graffiti incidents in the city on a year-over-year basis.

“It is getting worse, it’s not getting better, that’s for sure,” Murney said.

Of the graffiti cases, 98 per cent are considered to be hip-hop graffiti. Officers say they see many involved with graffiti also having contact with police for other crimes down the road.

“The whole idea is about concealment and not getting caught,” Murney said. “That’s a skill behaviour that’s really adaptable to go into other types of behaviour.”

He says incidents involving racially themed graffiti account for up to two per cent of cases each year.

Police say its important for people to contact them as soon as they notice graffiti so it can be removed as quickly as possible.

“That’s one of the keys to solving the problem is taking it down faster,” Fader said. “People involved in graffiti are generally involved in it for fame or notoriety within the subculture, so the longer their name is out there the better it is for them.”