TAGGING TAKES DEADLY DETOUR AS GRAFFITI CREWS BECOME GANGS.

Byline: SUE DOYLE Staff Writer

Once armed with spray-paint cans and etching tools, San Fernando Valley taggers are now toting guns and other weapons as violence among their crews is becoming as prevalent as their graffiti.

Last week's drive-by shooting of Walter Lopez by a crew of taggers is the latest example, police say. The group killed the 18-year-old North Hollywood man on a street where he had plastered his nickname -- ``Reefer'' -- in black spray paint.

``These tagging groups are resorting to weapons and guns and committing violent acts against rival tagging groups,'' said Detective Mike Coffey of the Los Angeles Police Department's North Hollywood Division homicide unit. ``They are climbing on the bandwagon. They are gangs.''

Wars among tagging crews -- who cross out competitors' monikers or paint over them with bigger and more flamboyant drawings -- have escalated to deadly acts usually exhibited by hard-core gangs.

In Lopez's case, police would not say whether he crossed out someone else's work or what else might have provoked the shooting, but they believe the shooting was the work of rival taggers.

The day after his death, a Sun Valley man and woman, both 21, were arrested in his killing. Police are looking for up to four more suspects.

At least 150 tagging groups work Valley streets, often scrawling their names in the dead of night across newspaper stands, restaurant windows and freeway overpass signs, resulting in about 80 percent of the graffiti that residents see every day, police said. They often start in grade school and continue through high school.

Since Lopez died, tagged messages acknowledging his passing have emerged in large, jagged handwriting across a fence that winds around the corner of Sylvan Street and Troost Avenue and down the front door of an apartment building where he was gunned down.

Makeshift memorial

Earlier this week, a dozen teens in the North Hollywood neighborhood stood around a makeshift memorial for him on the street and openly drank 40-ounce bottles of beer. Down the way, tagging covered the windshield of a produce truck and plastic garbage containers sitting curbside. Kids kicked a soccer ball from inside a locked iron fence where graffiti was scrawled on plywood stuck between its rungs.

Even with the tagging, the neighborhood is better today than it was in the 1990s, when a local gang terrorized families, residents said.

``It's not as bad as it was,'' said Edwina Crawford, 76, as she walked her dog. ``Still, I don't go outside a lot. My doors are double-locked.''

That gang eventually moved north to Lankershim Boulevard and Sherman Way, leaving a vacancy for some kids who moved into the area and took up tagging, Coffey said. As the kids get older, the gang problem could resurface.

Besides the death of Lopez, tagging-related homicides have hit other Valley communities. A 25-year-old Van Nuys tattoo artist who may have dabbled with tagging was killed May 11 in a ``walk-up'' shooting.

Police said four men and a woman fired into a crowd of tattoo artists and taggers who were having a show of their art outside a shop in the 17300 block of Saticoy Street. Anthony Sena of Van Nuys was killed.

Still at large

The two suspects, Gabriel Singer, 26, of North Hollywood and Candy Srichandr, 28, of Van Nuys remain at large. They are members of a tagging crew and took offense that someone had marked out their scrawl, said homicide Detective Craig Rhudy of the LAPD's Van Nuys Division.

Jealousy among taggers who have more artistic talent or paint over someone else's work -- known as capping -- can spark the violence that leads to homicide, giving them the nickname ``tag-bangers,'' said Officer Moises Ramirez of the LAPD's Community Tagger Task Force in the Van Nuys Division.

``Their motivation is no longer the art, but (is) putting the fear of God into people,'' Ramirez said. ``That's what gang members do. They put fear into people who live near them.''

But tagging crews are targeting their own -- the violence is contained to other crews -- unlike traditional street gangs, whose members will randomly strike outsiders, he said.

The increased violence among Valley taggers comes not only from defending themselves from other taggers but also from gang members.

``The reason they are starting to strap up is not only because they are competing with other tagging crews but with local gang members,'' Ramirez said.

Sometimes gang members don't want tagging on their walls or the attention it could bring from police, Ramirez said. Other times, if a tagging crew is working a certain area, the local gang will absorb them.

Elizabeth Raines, who lives a few streets down from where Lopez was killed, said while that neighborhood has improved, it's still dangerous, especially at night.

``I still don't go there,'' she said. ``It's scary for me.''

sue.doyle(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) A North Hollywood resident walks through the doorway of a building where a makeshift memorial was made for Walter Lopez, who was shot to death last week in what police term a tagger war.

(2) A makeshift tagger's memorial has been made for Walter Lopez, who was shot to death at the site last week as the result of a war that has erupted among taggers, police say.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer