[East Houston and B]
Meant to note this article in the Post the other day titled "Graffiti rearing its ugly head again in NYC."
Let's get to it!
Graffiti, a “broken windows” indicator about the quality of life in any city, is starting a slow, ugly creep around the Big Apple — with new tags appearing nightly.
The Post goes on to list several places where they've seen graffiti, such as along the FDR, Summit Avenue in the Bronx, the Amtrak tracks visible from the West Side Highway, under bridges on the East River.
Let's get to some stats!
Graffiti arrests in the city rose 4 percent in the first eight months of the year, to 1,080, city statistics show. But despite law enforcement’s best effort, graffiti continues to leave its mark.
The NYPD arrested 3,598 people for graffiti and related crimes in 2013, up slightly from 2012 but down 13 percent from the 4,000-plus levels of 2009 and 2008, city statistics show.
So, the NYPD is making arrests. How about the city cleaning up the graffiti?
The Sanitation Department is about a year behind on clean-ups. Since August 2013, the agency had closed 7,166 graffiti reports, but as of last Aug. 31, had another 7,739 still open.
And the service does not clean up the city’s own roadways, bridges or parks.
More stats!
According to open data Web information, since 2003, 81,525 graffiti reports were made to 311 and the police responded to 1,161 of those.
And then the article just sort of ends.
[Avenue A]
So… anyone think there's more graffiti in this neighborhood in recent years? It doesn't seem that way to me, though I don't work for the Post.