STAIN ON THE CITY TAGGER GRAFFITI ON THE RISE AS GANGS RECRUIT.

Byline: Judy O'Rourke Special to the Daily News

SANTA CLARITA - The number of taggers earning gang membership by defacing walls around Santa Clarita has increased over the past year, according to investigators.

Gangs' member ranks have shrank as members are sent to detention facilities, so they are recruiting new members, and taggers are prime.

``What has been going on the last six to eight months is at least one of our gangs, possibly two, have recruited a couple of tagging crews into the gang solely to build up their numbers,'' said Detective Dan Finn of the Santa Clarita Valley sheriff's station. ``Short of setting up a booth at the junior highs, they actively recruit - a lot of times - brothers and cousins of gang members.''

Many gang members get their start in junior high school. They might be as young as 12. Established gang members prey on loners and new arrivals, kids who might not speak English fluently.

``They take a Spanish-speaking kid at brunch or lunch, sitting in the corner of the yard, not talking to anyone,'' Finn said. ``(They say), We're your family. We'll watch out for you, protect you.''

Graffiti vandalism is often part of the initiation rite.

``It shows they're 'down for the 'hood' '' Finn said. ``It is a show of loyalty.''

Gang members mark their own turf and sometimes mark opposing gangs' turf as a sign of disrespect. Taggers, who often have no gang affiliation, have no boundaries.

``(Taggers' monikers) are preferably as big and as bright as they can get it for everybody to see,'' Finn said.

Six local criminal street gangs have about 425 identified members, according to sheriff's officials. About 250 are active in gang activities. Anywhere from 10 to 20 tagging crews come and go, but about half a dozen seem to have taken root. Each crew might have about six members, and officials estimate their ranks to be about 50 or 60 today.

Finn said the young vandals have told him they do it because they are bored. They tell him they don't see their doodles as a malicious destruction of property, he said.

Canyon Country has been a hotbed of tagging and gang activity, Finn said. The stylized marks appear on walls, electrical boxes, poles, buildings, sidewalks and sometimes on trees.

About 80 graffiti-related arrests were made this year, an increase from past years.

Authorities give much of the credit to residents who call 911 while the vandals are in the act. Some people even follow the kids until the deputies arrive. Many do not seek the maximum $500 reward. About 1,650 calls were made to the city's graffiti abatement hotline this year. Last year's 1,138 calls set a record. The city spent about $223,000 in 2004 to erase graffiti.

Volunteers who did much of the work saved the city at least $100,000, said Dianna Boone, the city's administrator of community services. The city provides paint, rollers and a pressure washer.

The scrubbers try to erase or cover the marks within 24 hours of the report, she said.

``There are times when it will take a few hours to eradicate a big block of graffiti,'' she said. ``Vandals can go along for a few blocks and do it on a number of areas. It can take a few minutes to put up and hours to remove.''

Convicted vandals often are required to clean up their work, under the supervision of Finn. Teenagers who participate in a city-sponsored graffiti-removal program fan out into the washes to create a gray coat over patchwork blocks of tagging.

Some businesses fear that officials are not stemming the tide.

``I don't think they're trying hard enough,'' said Glenn Wallin, the manager of the USA Petroleum gas station in Canyon Country. He said taggers ply their trade at will. ``It's all lit up (at night),'' he said. ``They're sitting out here doing it in front of everybody.''

Wallin said day and night taggers mark posts and pumps at the station and scratch their monikers into the glass. It costs hundreds of dollars to replace decals on the pumps, he said.

Taggers who seek gang affiliation leave the gang's tags in their wake. Because of taggers' wider range, gang lettering and penmanship is appearing in places it was not seen before.

Recruitment has picked up over the past year as gang members have increasingly been locked up.

While gang members are often recognizable by their attire and stride, taggers blend in with the crowd. Finn said they're average-looking kids who do not assimilate with the gang identification.

Taggers have stymied deputies by ditching old monikers and adopting new ones. The tagger who defaced a city bus last week at first appeared to be a new member, but technology ratted him out.

``There was a video camera in the bus,'' Finn said. A majority of city buses are equipped with surveillance cameras. The newly hired transit deputy showed school officials stills from the video.

Transit Deputy Bob Schneider said he finds graffiti on the buses nearly every day. Vandals often etch the windows. On Thursday, he spotted marks from a North Hollywood gang. ``A lot of kids use the (buses) to conduct a lot of nefarious activity - graffiti, being truant from school,'' he said. ``The transit system is no longer going to be a safe haven for these kids (to do that.)''

Schneider arrived in August to target problems in the transit system. Santa Clarita's $60,000 a year to remove graffiti is dwarfed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's outlay of $9 million a year, he said. Walls often are disfigured with spray paint, but permanent markers are commonly used.

On Thursday afternoon, a tagger scrawled his moniker in a newly renovated bathroom stall at Arroyo Seco Junior High School. The school has a zero tolerance policy for monikers and prohibits students from carrying permanent markers.

``We tell kids the first day the only name you're allowed to write on your backpack or property is your name,'' Principal Rhondi Durand said. The school has not often been a target of vandalism.

``If you like (graffiti), put it in your living room or your bathroom,'' she tells them.

School officials and campus-based resource deputies work closely with the Sheriff's Department to catch the culprits. City officials and sheriff's detectives monitor the groups' whereabouts and monikers via shared databases, but the vandals do some monitoring of their own. They maintain a Web site where they post media clippings that document their exploits.

Judy O'Rourke, [phone]

judy.orourke(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Casey Mapp, a city worker in Santa Clarita, uses a roller to conceal tagger graffiti on a wall in Newhall on Friday.

(2) City worker Casey Mapp remedies graffiti on a wall in Newhall. Such crimes can cost cities hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer