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City Attorney Seeks First-Ever Injunction Against Graffiti Vandalism Tagging Crew |
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Written by City Attorney's Office
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Wednesday, 23 June 2010 11:03 |
 The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office today announced that it has filed a civil case seeking a permanent injunction severely restricting the criminal and nuisance activities of one of the most prolific and destructive graffiti or “tagging” crews and ten of its known adult members operating and engaged in vandalism within the City of Los Angeles.
The case was filed and is being handled by Deputy City Attorneys Jim McDougal and Travis Austin of the City Attorney’s Gang Division. This filing is the first of its kind against a graffiti tagging crew.
Named as defendants in the injunction are the MTA tagging crew (aka Metro Transit Assassins), which is named as an organization, and ten known adult members of the MTA tagging crew. The ten members of the MTA named in the injunction are also known to associate with other tagging crews across the city.
The complaint, filed by the City Attorney’s Office, seeks an injunction as part of a public nuisance abatement, similar to a civil gang injunction, and is based on the graffiti crew’s costly vandalism, violence, and narcotics trafficking activities.
Unlike previous civil gang injunctions, however, the City Attorney is not seeking a pre-defined Safety Zone, because this tagging crew and its members commit their criminal and nuisance activities over a broad area of the region and are not limited to a defined area.
With this injunction, the City Attorney’s Office seeks to severely limit the named tagging crew’s criminal and nuisance activities by imposing a list of conditions, including a prohibition against MTA tagging crew members from associating with each other, and from possessing graffiti tools or weapons, as well as a mandatory curfew for the defendants, among other provisions. The civil suit also seeks $250,000 in civil penalties and $3.7 million in damages for the 500 documented incidents of graffiti vandalism associated with the tagging crew.
The complaint includes 52 witness and expert declarations from law enforcement officers including 101 photographs, documenting defendants’ graffiti vandalism, including vandalism and destruction of the LA riverbed, highway signs, highway sound walls, billboards, bridges, buses, passenger trains, freight train cars, trucks, homes, and numerous commercial buildings.
A court hearing has been set for August 31, 2010 to address service of the injunction on the MTA tagging crew.
MTA is known to be responsible for a quarter-mile long work of graffiti vandalism, known as a "bomb," on the walls of the Los Angeles river bed - an effort which required an estimated $3.7 million in clean up costs. The Los Angeles Board of Public Works, Office of Community Beautification, estimates that it alone spends in excess of $7 million annually for graffiti abatement and other clean-up costs related to graffiti vandalism in the City of Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Transit Service Bureau, Special Problems Unit has been the primary law enforcement partner on this operation.
Numerous other law enforcement agencies also made significant contributions to the investigation and filing of this matter, including the Los Angeles Police Department, the California Highway Patrol Investigative Services Unit, the LA Regional Gang Intelligence Network, the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, and the “Graffiti Task Force of California.”
Related Links:
L.A. city attorney seeks injunction against 'MTA' tagging
crew
First-Of-Its-Kind Injunction Filed Against
Prolific L.A. Tagging Crew
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 23 June 2010 11:15 |
