To the surprise of many, LA is the graffiti capital of the world. According to LA Police Chief William Bratton, public property was bombed more last year in LA than the last three years in NYC. Bratton was the former police chief in New York under Rudy Giuliani. Bratton’s theory is that by allowing graf writers to go unpunished naturally leads to more serious crimes.
Bratton also has concern due to the gang rivalries and the part that graffiti plays in them. Rival gangs are known to bomb over one another’s tags in order to insult the other. Several of the cities sanctioned murals have been bombed by gang’s graf writers .
In order to combat the graffiti writers, Bratton has created the “ghost squad.” This is a group of officers that will spend their nights in unmarked cars with night-vision scopes. They have collected several folders of information on the major writers in the area. As of March 2000, it is a felony to put a single marking on a wall, sign, train and the like.
