For Longfellow resident Erik Espeland, leader of REMOV, the sense of violation and fear instilled by graffiti is very real. He has worked at graffiti removal for the past three years, with a group of 30-35 people. (Photo by Liberty Willms)

By JAN WILLMS

The continuing battle against graffiti in the Longfellow neighborhood has drawn allies from many quarters, all intent on decreasing the negative images defacing property in the area.

For Doug Thompson, property manager of Longfellow Family Foods at 35th and Minnehaha, the problem of cleaning up graffiti is one he has been dealing with for years.

“We have been dealing with all kinds, from KKK to MS13 to Crips and Bloods,” he said.

“I have gotten to the point where I am tired of going out there and painting over it.”

Although the community, the police and the city have all joined forces to combat the problem, Thompson has recently been upset at the lack of communication among the groups.

Recent graffiti on the food store has resulted in a plan for Sanford Middle School students to paint a mural on the wall. However, Thompson said the city came out and painted over the recent vandalism markings and then sent a bill for $160.

“I’m not paying it,” he said. He said he understood the mural was to be painted, and he is upset the city painted over the graffiti and billed him for it. He is sending a letter of dispute and hopes that the costs will be dropped.

“I am praying no one will graffiti it before the mural is painted,” he said, “or we’re back to square one.”

He said dealing with graffiti on the property has been a continuous problem.

“They have climbed up on pipes and painted graffiti on the second floor,” he said, referring to the property that houses the grocery, a law office and other stores.

“I could light the place up like Ft. Knox, but if they want to badly enough, they will still put up graffiti.”

The mural at 33rd Street and Minnehaha Avenue South, an artistic interpretation of the Mississippi River, is one of Longfellow's recent attempts to combat the persistent problem of graffiti on area buildings. (Photo by Liberty Willms)

Thompson said he and his daughter have sometimes been out on a Sunday night, painting over graffiti.

“You have to deal with it and work with it,” Thompson stated.

According to Shun Tillman, 3rd precinct crime specialist, graffiti is a city-wide problem. But Longfellow is taking several steps towards defeating it.

“Efforts from the community standpoint are definitely there, and people are definitely trying to combat it,” Tillman said. The Longfellow Community Council (LCC) has been at the forefront of this battle.

According to Joanna Solotaroff, a community organizer for LCC, the organization has received a Graffiti Innovation Grant from the city. There are four components to the grant.

The youth mural, slated to be painted on the Longfellow Foods building, will be created by students at Sanford School. There will also be a mural appreciation event to invite the families and children to celebrate their hard work together.

Faith Farrell, who has been responsible for designing other murals in the Longfellow area, is planning to make this mural more abstract, using more of a mosaic type pattern.

The Grant includes an anti-graffiti education campaign that will emphasize the importance of reporting graffiti, who to call when one sees graffiti and the consequences of graffiti to the community.

There will be an anti-graffiti kick-off on July 18 with free food and speakers on graffiti.

This will be followed by attendees going out and removing graffiti along with leaders of REMOV, an organization devoted to ridding property of vandalistic markings.

LCC will also put together graffiti removal kits with everything a resident would need to remove graffiti from his or her property. All Longfellow residents will be able to check these kits out free of charge.

Tillman has been working with the community, talking to youths about how graffiti affects the neighborhood.

“It’s hard to tell whether graffiti is a sign of worse things to come,” Tillman said. “Young adults and kids decide to deface property. I don’t think a lot of thought goes into it. They don’t think of the money that a property owner has to cough up to deal with it.”

Tillman said anyone seeing graffiti should call 311 to report it. It is recommended that the graffiti be photographed, and then cleaned off as soon as possible.

He said the city allows about 10-15 days for the property owner to remove it, or else the city removes it and charges a fee.

“When people see graffiti they often think it’s a sign of gangs moving into the neighborhood,”

Tillman said. “They think the neighborhood is going downhill” He said that how people perceive it is what has the biggest impact on a community.

For Erik Espeland, leader of REMOV, the sense of violation and fear instilled by graffiti is very real.

He has worked at graffiti removal for the past three years, and has a group of 30-35 people in his group who work with him.

He said that he thinks the amount of graffiti in the area has decreased over the past few years.

Espeland said the graffiti kits include moist towelettes with a solvent that work great on metal and plastic surfaces. There are a variety of Scot Brite-type pads. The kits have a citrus cleaner that can be applied to porous surfaces, and an assortment of rubber gloves and paints. Espeland himself has purchased paint scrapers and straight-edge razor blades to remove stickers.

He said he assumes the stickers are stolen from the Post Office, and taggers write the graffiti on the sticker. He said that is where the razor blades and paint scrapers come into play, removing the stickers.

Espeland uses Facebook and Google to contact people, setting up a time and place for members of REMOV to go out and clean off graffiti.

“It all depends on people’s availability,” he said.

“Gang graffiti is fairly new to us,” he said, “and I am most worried about that. People are worried that if they report it, they will be retaliated against.”

According to Angela Brenny, Clean City Coordinator/Graffiti Expert/Coordinator of Graffiti Innovation Grant, Longfellow was the fifth out of the top ten areas reporting graffiti, based on monthly records of 311 calls. She said that in the April graffiti report, the most recent to date, 31 were tags and only 3 were gang-related.

“The number of reports is slowly declining,” she said. “Either we are not getting reports as much, or the graffiti is decreasing.”

Espeland said that he did not see such a concentrated effort against graffiti when he first started working to remove it. He has had teams reaching out to him, which include parents of youth who do graffiti, landowners and community members. “The community is taking the neighborhood back,” Espeland said.

To connect with him and his graffiti-removing efforts, contact Espeland at eckbeck29@hotmail.com.

“I have gotten to the point where I am tired of going out there and painting over it.”

- Longfellow Family Foods property manager Doug Thompson

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