Seattle City Council member Tim Burgess intends to widen the definition of graffiti under the city’s criminal code and beef up financial penalties for offenders. First, a Burgess-sponsored bill would criminalize putting unwanted stickers on public or private property (the existing property-destruction law applies to anyone who “writes, paints or draws any inscription, figure or mark”—which doesn’t specifically include stickers). Second, the bill would allow courts to collect more restitution from offenders on behalf of property owners.
“They are really minor tweaks,” Burgess says. He eschewed more severe measures, such as penalizing parents or banning spray paint, because “they sound good, but there is no evidence that they make a difference on graffiti.”
Both components of the bill are derived from recommendations in a graffiti audit earlier this year, requested by Burgess and Council Member Tom Rasmussen, which found 556 examples of graffiti in the city but discovered “no instances of what could be called artistic tagging.” The report found that stickers were the most prevalent form of graffiti in the city and recommended they be included in the property-destruction law. (The Seattle Street Art group on Flickr displays thousands of examples of street art, many of them stickers.)
Under the city’s current anti-graffiti law—and Burgess’s proposed changes—offenders may be charged with a gross misdemeanor, which carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. The bill expanding that law will likely be introduced in the first quarter of 2011, Burgess says. 
good.
Up here in the boonies, Bellingham, there is one specific business that this would apply to. Cobra Lounge, I’m talking to you. Their stickers are all over town, just as bad and stupid as the tagger calling himself by the name of a white, Russian, whale. The Cobra Lounge may not be a crime, but the way their stickers are used certainly is.
Yeah, so I guess all the kids who put up ‘we need queer youth space’ stickers, whom the city just awarded a $100, 000 grant, should be subjects to gross misdemeanor charges. That makes about as much sense as, well, nothing.
I hope a actual vandals keys the shit out of Tim Burgess’s car.
*I hope actual vandals key*
good luck catching someone slapping a sticker around town
The changes in law are thoughtful and take into account evidence as to what is effective and what is not. I’m still waiting for The Stranger to say anything coherent in your hipper-than-thou pro-graffiti commentary.
So far the best you can come up with is repeatedly publishing your count of the number of images in a Flickr group, which means fuck all, if I know anything about how self-published social media work on the internet. It’s a motherfucking Flickr group, not the MOMA.
What’s not to like about a bill like this?
Hopefully the judges in King County will throw the book and hit all these kids with maximum sentencing. Since it costs around $115 a day to keep an inmate locked up in King County*, that’s $209,875.00 for a year. The potential $5K fine will go some ways towards offsetting that figure.
But that’s what it might take to rid our city of this visual scourge.
* {cite: http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/south_king/f…}
None of the graffiti is ever about political, social, or even artistic statements. So what does that leave us with?
The tagging? It’s all crap.
“Graffiti”? Around here, again it’s all crap aping the outdated and now irrelevant styles that were played out decades ago.
Stickers? Advertising crap, tags on mailing label crap, and rarely something decent…very rarely.
As far as the rest of the provisions, I’d like to see oppressively horrible restitution rendering taggers further into destitution when caught. Destructive little shits should be liable for their damage.
Glass etchers should be blinded.
Vehicle taggers should be run over. Then run over again in reverse for good measure.
Don’t these assholes have something better to do with their time?
Which assholes am I talking about?
Sounds like a win-win to me. The city gets to collect a few more dollars in fines, and sticker “artists” get to feel like they’re as cool as bathroom stall sharpie “artists” because now they’re officially sticking it (no pun intended) to the man.
Wow all that aggression t word someone who might just end up Designing the Expensive Pompous asses. So Judge mental about someones FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION! I said it. Just imagine you live in a world of BLACK and WHITE. And all you want to do is bring some Color and Expression into this Grey dull world . You want a rush a high and don’t use a drug to get it . People Get to know you without seeing you. This is what it is to be a True Graffiti Artist . This sticker thing is just a lame attempt to make a few more bucks off the people who don’t exist . We are Artists Companies,Musicians Ordinary people expressing ourselves that’s all.