ANTI-GRAFFITI BILL CAUGHT IN LEGISLATIVE STALEMATE.

Byline: Paul Hefner Daily News Sacramento Bureau

One bill caught in the legislative tug of war over ``three strikes'' would give police back a key weapon in the fight against graffiti vandals, supporters of the measure say.

Senate Bill 1229 by Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, would restore to prosecutors the power to treat multiple acts of vandalism as a felony - authority they lost under a recent court ruling.

``If this bill fails, what happens is the anti-graffiti effort is cut off at the knees,'' Schiff said.

The bill had been scheduled for a Senate floor vote Wednesday. But fellow Democrats sent it back to a committee - where it barely survived an initial vote.

Word of the bill's uncertain future irritated police and community groups who said that treating the crime as a felony rather than as a misdemeanor has been crucial in their efforts to combat graffiti.

``I think it's politics as usual. It's politics getting in the way of common sense,'' said Tom Weissbarth, president of Sylmar Graffiti Busters. ``I thought this should be easy. We don't have a tagger's lobby to deal with.''

Like many other bills dealing with felony prosecutions, the measure has become caught in a ``Catch-22'' stalemate over whether to exempt it from the state's ``three strikes, you're out'' sentencing law.

Democrats who control the Senate's Public Safety Committee insisted on amending the bill last month so that no one convicted under its felony provisions would be subject to the 25 years to life sentence required under ``three strikes.''

But Republicans have vowed to oppose any exemptions to ``three strikes.''

State Sen. Diane Watson, D-Los Angeles, who moved to include the exemption before voting in favor of the bill in committee, said she'll vote against it next week.

``I will not put my aye vote on it,'' Watson said.

Watson says she doesn't want to risk seeing a graffiti vandal sentenced to a life term in prison. The law doesn't require the third strike to be a serious or violent felony to trigger the life sentence.

But Los Angeles police Detective Craig Rhudy, who oversees the Valley Community Tagger Task Force, said there's virtually no chance a tagger would fall under the ``three strikes'' law.

Violent criminals don't tend to cap their careers by spray-painting walls, he said. Most graffiti vandals are juveniles - already exempt from ``three strikes.'' And for few adults who are prosecuted, tagging is usually their first offense.

``It's a totally ridiculous and unnecessary fight,'' Rhudy said. ``The Legislature is playing games with this `three strikes' issue when it doesn't really apply.''

Rhudy and others backed Schiff's legislation in response to an appeals court ruling that held prosecutors could not add up the damage from individual acts of vandalism to meet the $5,000 threshold for a felony charge.

The principle was established in law to allow authorities to consider the losses from multiple thefts as a single crime. But the court ruled that the current law couldn't be stretched to apply to vandalism without specific action by the Legislature.

The ruling hurt anti-graffiti efforts, Rhudy said, because felony prosecutions against taggers allowed judges to put offenders under probation supervision for three years. Misdemeanor probation is limited to one year.

For a typical 15-year-old tagger, three years is long enough to keep them out of trouble for good. One year isn't, Rhudy said.

Authorities have never sought lengthy jail terms for taggers. The longest term anyone targeted by the task force received over its four years of work was six months.

``We're not looking to put anyone away for 25 years to life for spray paint,'' Weissbarth said. ``We're trying to effectively deal with the problem.''