Can community members paint taggers into a corner?

By Jackie Valley

Sunday, May 22, 2016 | 2 a.m.

A boxy, red-brick building at 1820 Desert Inn Road has become ground zero for what neighbors describe as a war — residents versus graffiti taggers.

If the abandoned medical office, which bears the scars of repeated graffiti vandalism, is the prime target, then its neighbors are the collateral damage. Nearby property owners say the rampant spray-paint inscriptions hurt home values and bruise their attempts to revitalize their section of Paradise Palms, a mid-century modern neighborhood in central Las Vegas.

“We’ll cover (graffiti) on a Monday, and that Friday it’s tagged again,” said Dan Stafford, who lives on Sombrero Drive, the residential street behind the graffiti-plagued building.

Stafford has become an anti-graffiti crusader in his neighborhood, regularly buying brick-colored paint and covering unwanted markings. His motivation is personal: The one-story home he shares with his aunt has been in their family since his grandparents purchased it in 1963.

Now, he’s busy restoring the home and hopes the neighborhood can fully return to the atmosphere he remembers as a child — when most neighbors knew and looked out for each other. If one family went on vacation, a handful of others would pick up their mail and keep tabs on the home, Stafford said.

Neighborly camaraderie has been making a comeback in Stafford’s section of Paradise Palms, north of Desert Inn Road, where homes have been selling for $150,000 to $250,000.

The neighborhood, the largest portion of which lies south of Desert Inn between Eastern Avenue and Maryland Parkway, once was among the most lavish in Las Vegas. It was home to stars like Debbie Reynolds and Johnny Carson, as well as such prominent community and business leaders as Jay Sarno, the visionary behind Caesars Palace, and Bob Mayheu, Howard Hughes’ top associate.

But as the city grew and newer developments drew residents to the suburbs, pockets of the neighborhood fell into decay — a trend that accelerated when foreclosure and abandonment left many homes in disrepair.

In recent years, however, Paradise Palms has been undergoing revitalization after attracting new residents who were drawn by the unique architecture of the homes, low sales prices and the legacy of the neighborhood.

“It’s not happening on every single street, but it’s growing on every single street,” Stafford said.

That’s why he believes the timing is right for the community to earn designation as a historic neighborhood. He’s been working with other neighbors and the Nevada Preservation Foundation to help make that happen for Paradise Palms.

Because Paradise Palms contains nearly 1,000 homes, the group hopes to achieve the designation in sections, based on when homes were built and their architectural style.

But graffiti remains a barrier in Stafford’s section of the master-planned community. The vacant brick building near an entrance to his neighborhood may be the most frequent target, but “urban hieroglyphics,” as he calls graffiti, appear in alleyways and on backyard walls, Stafford said.

And when that happens, it damages the neighborhood’s history, he said.

“What the taggers haven’t figured out is that everything in this mid-century modern neighborhood is valuable,” Stafford said.

Metro Police Detective Scott Black sympathizes with residents like Stafford. As a detective specializing in graffiti investigations, Black knows the frustrations associated with this property crime, which costs about $30 million in public and private funds each year to clean up across the valley.

“It’s a very unusual crime because the motivation is very unique,” he said. “Graffiti doesn’t pay a dime.”

For the majority of taggers, graffiti is their primary crime — and the motivation is the satisfaction of seeing their moniker grace real estate throughout the community, Black said. And although not usually a violent crime, it’s a nuisance that harms property owners and businesses and can lead to crime increases, he said.

Like a pesky weed, graffiti begets more graffiti.

“It’s one of those baseline crimes that you cannot let take foothold in your neighborhood,” Black said.

The good news: Although graffiti has increased as the Las Vegas metro area has grown, so has the number of laws aimed at curbing the nuisance. Now, repeat violators can be charged with a felony on their third offense. And if detectives can show a tagger has committed multiple acts of graffiti, those offenses can be combined into a greater charge, Black said. In essence, detectives can build cases against taggers, based on their graffiti, before they are ever arrested — and when they are caught, they can face a more severe charge.

Both the city of Las Vegas and Clark County have graffiti abatement programs, which work proactively to cover graffiti before it’s even reported. The city uses about 5,000 gallons of paint annually to eliminate graffiti in parks, trails, streets and other public areas, officials said.

Clark County, meanwhile, employs four painters who cover graffiti in unincorporated areas of the county, including spray-paint vandalism on private property, said Jason Allswang, the county’s chief of code enforcement. The county receives about 10,000 graffiti-related calls per year.

Thanks to a recent ordinance change, the county’s abatement program now has the ability to paint over graffiti covering public-facing walls in both residential and commercial areas, Allswang said.

“Our response to graffiti gets better all the time,” he said. “As our painters become more familiar with their areas, they know the spots that are hit.”

Allswang encourages property owners to photograph graffiti, send the pictures to police and call the graffiti hotline (702-455-4509) if they need help covering the vandalism.

The advice mirrors what Stafford has been preaching within his section of Paradise Palms: Neighbors need to unite in the fight against graffiti. He’s not advocating they paint over graffiti on another person’s property without permission. That could be a liability, he said, but Stafford wants residents to at least report it. Another tactic is for full-time residents to make arrangements with part-time or absentee property owners to paint over graffiti.

“I don’t want residents to drive by, look at graffiti, shake theirs heads and continue their day,” he said. “You have to be a proactive citizen in your community to get things done.”

That could be as simple as placing a phone call to report it or keeping several buckets of paint — in varying shades — on hand to quickly cover the vandalism, he said.

“The faster it gets taken away, the less taggers want to tag in this area,” he said, reiterating what graffiti detectives tell the community. “If we don’t keep at it as neighbors, it will run away from us.”

And take away the charm of this central Las Vegas neighborhood.