It stains the reputation of a safe community.

So says a city police officer who has been studying the link between graffiti and other criminal activity over the past few years. As a member of the Ontario Gang Investigators Association, Constable John Stoeckle is particularly interested in graffiti and its possible link to gang activity.

Members of Peterborough Lakefield Community Police Service, along with Police Foundations students from Sir Sandford Fleming College, Royal Canadian Army cadets, young people from the Bridge Youth Centre and other residents, recently took a day to paint over the graffiti on Peterborough structures. The project, called Graffiti Busters, was primarily co-ordinated by Const. Stoeckle, who works in the community services division at the city police department.

Its removal was necessary for facelift reasons, but also because of the fear graffiti can ignite in citizens, Const. Stoeckle notes. Volunteers painted over racial slurs and homophobic comments.

Const. Stoeckle recalls viewing some creations that were blatantly racist. “It was an absolutely deplorable thing to see,” he says. “I just wanted to get rid of it.” He notes he saw the graffiti as a citizen, while walking with his children in Jackson Park.

When people see graffiti like that, it tarnishes the reputation of a community as a whole, says Const. Stoeckle. Threatening graffiti also suggests an unsafe atmosphere, he notes. “When seniors walk through there, you create that aura, that feeling, it might not be a safe space.”

He says while there’s no doubt some people view cleaning up graffiti as unnecessary, studies indicate crime goes down when graffiti is removed.

According to the Toronto Police Service which has a graffiti eradication program in place, graffiti creates a “heightened fear of crime in the community” and gives the impression “no one cares about the overall state of the community.” The police service has established a graffiti eradication information line.

Meanwhile in Ajax, the Town just launched a 24-hour hotline residents can call to report vandalism and littering in the community of 76,000. The hotline was established as part of a strategy to combat vandalism and litter in the town.

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