WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Prosecutor: Vandals Clean Up or Go to Jail
Member Center:
Burlington, Vermont - April 3, 2009
The Chittenden County Prosecutor says graffiti vandals unwilling to clean up their destructive mischief at their own expense will go to prison. The prosecutor issued the clean-it-up-or-else ultimatum Friday after police charged their sixth alleged graffiti vandal in less than two weeks.
Police say they caught 19-year-old Haley Smart in the act of spray painting one of his personalized graffiti tags on a street sign near his dorm at Champlain College.
Police say that triggered a search of Smart's computer files which revealed his photos of the graffiti vandalism he had left on many buildings in Burlington, including a large job on a bridge overpass just off Shelburne Road.
City officials estimate it will take two city employees at least two days to clean that one at a cost of more than $1,000.
Smart's alleged handiwork is only part of the growing graffiti blight that has triggered a series of arrests, including three suspects with prior convictions who are being held without bail.
"The community has clearly spoken. They're fed up with this nonsense," Chittenden County Prosecutor T.J. Donovan said.
Donovan says there was a time when graffiti was cleaned up quickly. But that stopped because federal funding for the cleanup program was cut. Donovan says he will demand sentences that require the culprits to clean it up at no expense to taxpayers, or go to prison.
"I think they're going to come to the conclusion very quickly that it's far better to go out, use a little bit of elbow grease and clean these walls, clean these buildings as if they were brand shiny new because the alternative is they sit in jail," Donovan said.
Haley Smart pled not guilty to 26 misdemeanor charges of unlawful mischief and one felony count for the masterpiece on the bridge underpass.
He was released on $1,000 bail with orders to stay in his dorm pending resolution of his case that the prosecutor will mandate cleaning up all of his efforts.
While the prosecutor hopes to get convicted vandals to bear the cost of cleanup, in the meantime, it's falling to property owners. But they are getting help from volunteers. Burlington police and the Center for Community and Neighborhoods recently teamed up on a citywide graffiti remediation program.
Brian Joyce - WCAX News
