Pondering pernicious painting in Prague

Unsightly graffiti in beautiful Prague.

We loved, loved, loved our time in Prague last month. It is a beautiful, historic city. But our friends and I immediately noticed on our visit that many of the fantastic buildings are defaced by ugly graffiti.

That got me to thinking about Knoxville and our graffiti issues. Several months ago, Alan and I were about to have dinner in our downtown condo, when Alan spotted two young guys spray-painting a “tag” on the empty Pryor Brown Parking Garage at the corner of Church Avenue and Market Street. I grabbed my cellphone and photographed the guys. Then, we consulted with two friends who work for the city. They urged us to call the Knoxville Police Department, which we did. We emailed them the pictures of the vandalism and the guys.

In less than 30 minutes, the police had apprehended them on bicycles on Jackson Avenue. They brought them back to our place and had Alan identify them, and they were taken to the police station and charged. Although they denied they had done it, a can of spray paint matching the color of the tags on the garage was found in one of their backpacks. And some paint on one of their pants also matched the color.

To make a long story short, the guys turned out to be brothers from Farragut. They hired a lawyer and ended up plea bargaining. They agreed to clean up the graffiti and perform some community service.

Graffiti in Prague.

All our downtown friends said we did the right thing, and we think we did, too. But it was a pain. Alan had to go to court the day their trial was set just in case he would be needed to testify. They recently did clean up the building. Unfortunately, it already is defaced again — this time with the school colors of Western Carolina University, which played a football game here a few weeks ago. Sigh.

I am writing this because I don’t want Knoxville to end up looking as ugly as the vandalized buildings in Prague. I spoke with Darrell DeBusk of the Knoxville Police Department. “If you paint on a building you don’t own, it’s vandalism,” DeBusk said. “We take it very seriously. It costs a lot of money for the people who own the buildings to clean up.”

DeBusk said the problem in Knoxville ebbs and flows and, currently, it seems to be down a bit. He also said the majority of it is not related to street gangs marking their territory, but rather to groups of taggers who work together. Train cars are particular targets, DeBusk noted. There are websites where taggers monitor the train cars as they move across the country and give shout-outs to one another when they recognize particular tags. “Most of that is people who see it as artistic,” DeBusk said.

But it’s vandalism and it’s a crime. I told DeBusk that Alan and I felt guilty calling 911 because we worried that 911 was meant for more serious crimes. I asked if people should be reporting it to the police department’s nonemergency number instead. But DeBusk said no.

“We encourage anyone who sees it happening to call 911. The quicker we get there, the better chance we have to catch the perpetrators,” he said. There you have it folks. Let’s work together to keep Knoxville beautiful.

Graffiti in downtown Prague.

Graffiti in Prague.

Graffiti in Prague. Nothing artistic about it.

More graffiti in Prague. Well, you get the idea.

Even the banks of the Vltava River were defaced.