"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls...tenement halls..."
This is hardly "art", more like rubbish.
These "people" are proud of their work, and the best way to combat it is to remove it as soon as possible.
There are videos out there that show how these characters work. Usually it's a group, with backpacks full of spray cans who show up and raid a site and do their handiwork, and they're done in a half hour, tops.
I bet that these people don't BUY that spray paint. The stock shrinkage in stores must be atrocious!
Another problem is that the justice system treats this as just an annoyance and slaps the few who get caught (usually repeat offenders) on the wrist. Appropriate punishment is to make them LICK the stuff off!

WD-40 works well up to several days after being done.

That's exactly what they're using. At least some of them are, I certainly can't speak for all of them.

Why do they use Krylon? It's free if you don't mind doing a little shoplifting, and it's a simple self contained system.

How do I know they use Krylon? I do a lot of work in rail yards and industry spurs. Let's just say that guys who are willing to shoplift never think twice about littering. So I see lots of empties laying around.

They never leave the empty cans after tagging the trains at Septa in the yards.

The story from an old timer at IRM was that years ago, in the dead of winter, they found an aluminum ladder in between the rails, with tracks in the snow leading to the ladder. About five feet away from the ladder, they found a "snow angel" and tracks leading away. About 10 feet away, they found a charred hack saw.

Theft of overhead, while possible hasn't been a problem at IRM. It's energized year round, which is pretty good theft prevention.

With the exception of a blown up bolt cutter instead of the hack saw, the other details match the story I heard.

Jeff

Out of curiosity, how was this even possible?

From reading Rail & Wire, I was under the impression that the storage barns, yards, and such were actively monitored with security cameras to prevent an overnight intruder from being able to do something like this.

Did they just get lucky and did their vandalism in a spot where they were concealed?

The fact that some graffiti looks like it could be airbrushed is attributable to the fact that special spray can nozzles for making various spray patterns are readily available and cheap on ebay and other sites.

As they say in the security business, video cameras do not stop crime, only document it.
Another true-ism my Dad liked to use, locks only keep the honest people out.

Hi,

Chama NM is a town of about 1200 (depending on season). It is the home of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR - the historic 64 miles of ex-D&RGW over Cumbres Pass with the steam locos and wood cars.

About 10-15 years ago, several of the WOOD box cars got Graffitied.

It used to be a big city problem. I canrecall when "Kilroy was here" was the biggist disfigurement of railroaad equipment.

No one seems to respect other's property rights.

Doug vV

Monitoring doesn't do squat other than record the act unless you have guards patrolling the area. Ideally, a facility should have cameras covering the entry and exit areas of each building and the entry and exit points of the facility itself. When we set up the initial security system at TVRM, we had one camera that recorded the entrance to the main driveway at Grand Junction. A second exterior camera covered the outside of the front door (where the security keypad was located). A third interior camera covered the same door from the inside with two additional cameras providing additional coverage of the waiting room area. Another camera covered the platform side of the building.

Some of the cameras were covert and others were intentionally set up so that people could see that the facility was covered with surveillance video. The volunteer who set up the system was retired United States Air Force-Strategic Air Command and had a background in facility security. Recognizing that video is essentially limited to providing evidence, we made certain to set up the system so that it recorded every person entering and exiting the facility and would provide imagery of a high enough quality to recognize faces clearly.

Our system was not actively monitored, but was set up to digitally record and save data for later retrieval if necessary. The recording equipment was located in a secure part of the building with very restricted access.

Many surveillance systems now have motion-sensing technology and virtually all the new DVR systems can be connected to the internet. Easy to alert someone and manually log in to see what is going down.

Say what you will about surveillence cameras, they are wildly better than having nothing. Because when the damage is done, the win is to GET THE GUY. Which means a strong legal case. Which means collecting evidence well. Think of the opening courtroom scene in "Better call Saul". Get that.

Modern cameras/controllers can also push video to the cloud in real time, which is real nice if they get in deep enough to steal the video storage unit. The better $200+ deer cameras can push to the cloud via cellular modem, more than one deer-camera thief has been caught that way. A cheaper way is use an external USB hard drive bricked into a wall.


Connect to baldwin's report of vandals taking their empty cans with them. My guess is they are using specialty paint and caps made specifically for street art, by small manufacturers. Who do low enough volume that if the cops find empty paint cans with 6 different color codes, batch and date codes etc. with 4 models of cap, pulling the retail and manufacturer orders for those items is likely to identify a single buyer like a fingerprint.

Not that graffiti isn't already a fingerprint. Seriously, look past the defacement to the actual art of it and cultural meaning, and you'll see that each artist's style is unique and identifiable. Especially if he signs it.

In their newsletter, I remember a call for donations to upgrade their security equipment. I recall being impressed since their system was portrayed as something that's actively monitored. Not just something that they refer to after the fact in the hope of assisting in catching the perpetrator.

Hence my curiosity.

I didn't want to go into too much detail, but one place with which I work/have worked recently had a "young gun" upgrade the security set-up with motion-activated cameras that either can be instantly watched via cell phone or, under the right circumstances, will call a designated monitoring member and alert him to potentially nefarious activity.

If the decision to summon police is made, they can be there in one to three minutes.

Yes, the biggest concern around there is graffiti. They're in a pure "hotbed" of graffiti "art"--in one of those areas where art "academics" come to "study" the "artistry" involved, while we secretly plot booby traps involving high voltage/explosives/caliber......