Los Angeles' War on Street Artists

Peter Bibring, the ACLU lawyer who represented Smear, says the injunction "raises clear First Amendment concerns" and puts "really serious restrictions against people's liberty."

City attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan says in an email that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Deirdre Hill is expected to approve the injunction deal in October without a hitch. If that happens, somewhat incredibly, when MTA members try to use their well-known street names to launch legitimate art careers, they may face Carmen Trutanich in court. Under the proposed injunction, Trutanich claims stamping their night-vandal names on legal artwork is an "unfair business practice," because they achieved their fame through illegal acts — tagging others' property.

Rime, a highly skilled graffiti writer with L.A.'s artistic MSK crew, says, "When you do a good job in anything you do, there is that hope for growth."

PHOTO BY NANETTE GONZALES

Sand One: "There are all these European artists being flown out to L.A. But me, a local girl, all my stuff is getting erased."

Details

See also:
How the City of Gardena Turns Every Piece of Graffiti Into a Felony Crime

The Secrets of L.A. Street Art: Bumblebee, Sharktoof and Linelinedot Discuss Their Work

Fuck New York: Street Art Began Here in L.A.

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More About

• Carmen Trutanich
• Metropolitan Transportation Authority
• Lee Baca
• Visual Arts
• Street Art

But if government officials take away legal options for graffiti artists to rise and perhaps even earn a living through self-expression, "They're pushing good kids into felons," Rime says.

The ACLU's Bibring argues, "You can't say someone who has previously engaged in a crime can't engage in certain kinds of expression in the future. I would hope the city would encourage people to turn their talents to productive and legal uses."

While violent gang members face injunctions that stop at the edge of their turf in East Los Angeles or South Central, Bibring calls this tagger injunction aimed at nonviolent young people "remarkable" in its geographic reach: It applies statewide.

"They should stop making false bad guys out of us," says Saber, another MSK celebrity.

But the truth is, the Special Problems Unit and Sheriff Baca don't even need the new injunction Trutanich is so excited about. Metro and the sheriff already treat taggers as full-on gangsters, under the California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP Act).

Designed to combat rampant gang crime in 1980s ghettos, the act lets gangsters be punished more severely if cops prove their crimes are on behalf of a criminal organization. The Special Problems Unit, however, is using the STEP Act to add "gang enhancements" to misdemeanor-level Sharpie doodles drawn on walls, thus promoting those marks to a felony. The $400 minimum damage normally required to turn a California citizen into a felon is waived.

Under Metro's use of the STEP Act, a colorful loop of words that might cost $150 to paint over can make a young person a felon for life. "All these crews are just gangsters at the end of the day," Sgt. Meadows says.

But a growing body of critics says law enforcement is stigmatizing a vibrant — albeit unpopular with many residents — subculture by focusing on the violence of gangsters who tag, a different group. According to L.A. graffiti historian Steve Grody, almost every graffiti artist currently taking galleries by storm started out as a garden-variety tagger.

"People want the rain without the thunder and the lightning," Grody says. "If you're going to let a culture have some sense of self-expression, then that includes youth-movement things. That doesn't mean all 'bombing' should be left alone. [But] when it's treated as though it's some sort of horrible, harmful felony, it's out of balance."

Grody, author of Graffiti L.A.: Street Styles and Art, and co-curator of last year's "Street Cred: Graffiti Art From Concrete to Canvas" show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, sees clear visual distinctions between gang and nongang graffiti.

"If you're a gangster, you write in a certain way that makes it clear that you're a gangster," he says.

While some popular graffiti is "gang-influenced in its letter forms and its badass attitude," Grody feels that any cop trained in the nuances of both cultures could tell the difference.

On a recent L.A. Weekly ride-along with the Special Problems Unit, two undercover, plainclothes deputies lingered at the Green Line's Willowbrook station for just 10 minutes before spotting someone suspicious. A Latino teenager waiting for the train with his sister had meticulously tagged the surfaces of his backpack and skateboard.

The deputies started questioning the boy about his choice of decor: Was he a tagger? What crew? And what was in the backpack?

He never gave up his moniker ("Realm" and "WDK" were prominent on his backpack and board) but admitted he was a tagger and was carrying a box cutter and spray paint. The 14-year-old was handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car. It was his first encounter in what officers predicted would be a long relationship with the law.

Deputy Kevin Hom tells the Weekly that even without the spray paint, the graffiti-style writing covering the boy's belongings created probable cause to search him for tagging tools.

Unlike most gangsters, a tagger often touts his crew on his sleeve. "Here's what's weird about taggers: They're proud of what they do and want to talk tons about it," Sgt. Meadows says.

Experts say many taggers don't think of themselves as criminals, and — like many young people — need a way to release their frustration, desire, independence, freedom and rage.

Historian Grody even goes so far as to argue that tagging — while a nuisance to many that does warrant some punishment — is also a stepping stone to perfecting the graffiti style, without which many of the genre's talented stars would not exist.