The writing’s on the wall, at last

GRAFFITI vandals at long last have been tagged.
Those who have done it have been granted their ultimate wish — their work has been recorded for posterity.
The problem for them is that their tags now have pride of place in the Narre Warren Police office.
A Casey Council and police joint working party has been collecting photographs of ‘tags’ left by vandals.
This means that if they are caught, and they will be, there is a record of where they have defaced property other than their own.
Court orders will be made to have them pay for the cost of repairing the damage.
Casey mayor Colin Butler said the council’s zero tolerance policy on graffiti was paying off and I commend the council absolutely for persisting with this campaign.
Cr Butler said that over the last five years the Casey graffiti management program led the way in tackling this important social issue.
He said the partnership with police and key stakeholders had delivered a strong result.
“This recent joint operation with council’s community safety team and police to target vandals responsible for graffiti in Casey required a high level of confidentiality to have the maximum chance of succeeding.
“As a result, vandals are being apprehended and called to account, which is great news for our community and our streetscapes,” he said.
I was among the most surprised when I heard that 10 vandals had been arrested since November, because I was wondering where the costly efforts were leading.
This is a great success story for the council, particularly because little encouragement for its notolerance policy was coming from the state and federal governments.
Casey has invested hundreds of thousand of dollars trying to get rid of graffiti and has almost succeeded, but has set the scene for senior governments to take up the issue.
I believe the council has awakened at least the State Government from its sleepy tolerance of this community souldestroying vandalism.
We still need a strong statement from the Federal Government supporting the notolerance policy on graffiti.
The complex attitudes and arrogance of graffiti vandals was probably best shown when one arrested for defacing property drew his tag on a police office desk while he was in for questioning.
Nevertheless, we are seeing enormous progress against this scourge and plans are now in hand to have the team also work in the Shire of Cardinia.