LAPD, Smartphones and Graffiti Removal
The March 4th edition of the LA Times had an article about Los Angeles Police Department's use of Smartphones to track graffiti and tie it to a specific tagger for prosecution. The system, Tracking and Automated Graffiti Removal System or TAGRS allows graffiti removal crews to take photos of graffiti using smartphones. The photo is then uploaded into the TAGRS database at LAPD.
TAGRS was developed in cooperation between the Orange County Sheriff's Department/Transit Police Services along and Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) (( Source - OCSO TAGRS website and Officer.com. )) where it was implemented in 2007. A free-to-law-enforcement tool, TAGRS uses Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) data to store and track graffiti incidents, making it easier for various entities to report, police to share, and prosecutors to build their cases against individual taggers. TAGRS has been adopted by a number of agencies. Among them are the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Sheriƒff’s Office, the Orange County police departments in Costa Mesa, Irvine, Newport Beach, Fountain Valley, Orange, Tustin, Westminster and the Orange County Probation. Cities outside of Orange County include Oxnard and Lake Elsinore (( Source - California Sheriff Magazine. )) . In Orange County in 2008 the TAGRS program helped solve 151 graffiti cases in the county, and, so far in 2009, it has helped crack 134 cases (( Source - Daily Pilot. )) . Orange County has increased graffiti case solving by an astronomical 1587.5% since 2007. Police services in Lake Forest shows a net savings of $85,000 by using TAGRS . Costa Mesa alone has solved 110 cases (( Source - OCSO Blog. )) . By 2009, two years after TAGRS was implemented, graffiti removal cost less than $170,000, and OCTA saved about $114,000 because of the reduction in staff time spent on data input and other related activities (( Source - Officer.com. )) . "This database will help our law enforcement and city partners team up to I.D., arrest and prosecute the worst taggers and tagging crews in the city,'' said LA Councilman Jose Huizar. "Graffiti is one of the biggest quality-of-life issues for our residents—it is a problem that demands action. (( Quote source - OurWeekly. )) .'' Information from the TAGRS database led to the arrest of 19 graffiti vandals in early February. The suspects were arrested throughout Los Angeles County, including in Lawndale, Hawthorne and unincorporated Lennox, for causing more than $200,000 in damages, according to the LAPD (( Quote source - Daily Breeze. )) . The LAPD implementation has been a multi-agency effort with significant support from the Mayor’s Office, Councilmember Huizar, LAPD, the Public Works Department, Information and Technology Agency, the City Attorney, and the District Attorney, with assistance from the Orange County Sheriffs Department (( Source - City of Los Angeles Mayors Website. )) . TAGRS is expected to be in use in all 21 LAPD divisions within the year. The total cost of the program is $345,000 over two years. Currently, the city spends $10 million a year on graffiti removal (( Cost source - OurWeekly. )) with DOJ estimates at costs nationwide of between $10 - $12 billion (( Source - California Sheriff Magazine. )) . News about the TAGRS program comes almost two months after the City of Los Angeles reported it is working on ways to cut its budget. One of the items on the block is that $10 million a year graffiti removal program. One proposal is to cut graffiti removal funding by 50% (( Source - La Taco. )) .