A St. Albert youth is facing eight criminal charges after a two-year police investigation tied her to 78 graffiti offences.
“Regardless of style, size or colour, graffiti is vandalism and a criminal offence when placed on public or private property without the owner’s consent,” said St. Albert RCMP Cpl. Laurel Kading.
The youth, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is charged with eight counts of mischief under $5,000.
The female vandal caused $7,231 in damages, notably to 62 separate pieces of property owned by the City of St. Albert. Other targets include Canada Post, Telus, Fortis Alberta and Waste Management Inc.
“(The graffiti) was all over St. Albert, but a fair portion would be through the green space areas along the trails,” Kading said, adding graffiti was discovered on surfaces such as utility and mail boxes.
She said the words or symbols written, commonly referred to as a tag, were not gang related. She did not comment on what the tag consisted of as publicizing the tag could give notoriety to the vandal.
Kading said RCMP are actively investigating other incidents of graffiti and expect to lay charges shortly.
St. Albert’s Public Works department is tasked with removing all graffiti from city-owned property and aims to have the vandalism removed within at least three weeks, said operations manager Steve Schlese.
“If it’s vulgar, then we’ll try and deal with it right away, within up to three working days,” he said, adding the department aims to have regular tags removed within 15 working days.
Schlese said graffiti is more of a problem in the summer months, attributing it to youth being outside for longer periods of time.
Police joined forces with several community organizations, including Citizens on Patrol. Neighbourhood Watch and St. Albert Family and Community Support Services, in 2011 to put an end to graffiti.
The spearheaded a program in 2008 that allows homeowners who find their private property vandalized with graffiti to obtain supplies to remove it.
Connie Smigielski, Family and Community Support Services’ manager of community strategy, said residents can take a photo of the graffiti, report it to RCMP and receive a coupon to a local retailer for a graffiti removal package and a discount on paint.
“If it’s removed quickly, there less chance that there will be more graffiti in the area,” she said.
The city reports that if graffiti is removed within 24 hours of the offence, the chances of recurrence are reduced to just 10 per cent.
In January, there were 43 reports of mischief compared to 62 for the same period last year. Nearly 1,000 incidents of mischief were reported to police in 2012. Mischief includes a variety of property offences, including vandalism and graffiti.
Kading couldn’t comment on whether graffiti incidents have decreased, but said graffiti is becoming less visible in the community because there is a stronger effort to remove it.
“If we have a community where we don’t clean up vandalism, we don’t clean up the graffiti, the message is that nobody cares, therefore, that can lead to people doing more graffiti,” she said. “St. Albert is a beautiful city and … we don’t want these kinds of eyesores around.”
Individuals who see graffiti are encouraged to contact the St. Albert RCMP at 780-458-7700, More information is available at www.stalbert.ca/graffiti.
The youth is set to make her first appearance on these charges in St. Albert Provincial Court April 2.
