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Scratching the surface
It costs millions of dollars every year to remove graffiti from buses, mEtro cars and other surfaces. And then there's scratchiti, a particularly destructive form of tagging that doesn't wash off
MARIAN SCOTT, The Gazette
Published: Monday, July 16
Sympathy for the Devil blared from a portable radio as Franco Bono fitted a brand new tempered-glass window into the door of a mEtro car.
But Bono, a maintenance worker for the Montreal Transit Corp., was feeling no sympathy for the vandals who had scratched the previous window beyond repair.
"It's sad to see," he remarked of the daily parade of mEtro cars that roll into the workshop with childish scratches on every window.
Maintenance worker Gilles Desjardins wipes graffiti off the doors and windows of a mEtro car in an MTC garage. To get rid of the scratchiti, the windows will probably have to be replaced.View Larger Image View Larger Image
Maintenance worker Gilles Desjardins wipes graffiti off the doors and windows of a mEtro car in an MTC garage. To get rid of the scratchiti, the windows will probably have to be replaced.
"It's taxpayers like us who pay for that."
Scratchiti - a form of graffiti whose perpetrators use keys, knives or acid to scratch windows and doors - is a costly scourge.
The MTC spends $1 million a year - one-third of its entire anti-graffiti budget - to remove scratchiti from the mEtro, buses and shelters, said Carl Desrosiers, executive director of operations for the transit authority.
But within hours, in some cases, offenders scratch the surfaces anew.
Montreal isn't the only place where every bus shelter, storefront and mEtro window is a ready target for vandals armed with sharp tools.
Scratchiti, which first appeared in the New York subway in the late 1980s, is rampant in cities from Rome to Regina.
Last week, the Laval Transit Corp. announced it is installing hidden cameras, at a cost of $5,000 each, on some of its buses to help stem scratchiti and other forms of vandalism.
The MTC also has hidden cameras on buses, but neither transit authority is revealing how many buses or which routes are under surveillance.
It costs $1,200 to $2,000 to replace a single bus window, said Marie-CEline Bourgault, a communications officer with the Laval transit authority.
Montreal spends $6.5 million yearly to combat graffiti, not including the MTC's $3-million anti-graffiti budget or spending by the private sector, said Marcel Tremblay, a member of the city's executive committee responsible for services to citizens.
"It's a catastrophe," said Tremblay, who did not know how much of that amount is used to repair scratchiti damage.
The transit authority employs 150 cleaners - three times as many as five years ago - to remove graffiti and scratchiti from its 759 mEtro cars.
In the MTC's sprawling mEtro repair shop, cleaner Gilles Desjardins used a rag soaked in a special cleaning product to wipe a door festooned with spray-painted graffiti and scratchiti.
The paint wiped away easily, but the etched scribbles remained.
"You can't clean scratchiti," pointed out Guy Dion, who heads the mEtro's emergency repair squad.
In some cases, workers use a buffer to erase the scratches. But often, the damage is irreparable.
"You have to take out the window," Dion said. MEtro workers replace five or six windows every day.
Scratchiti weakens tempered glass so it breaks more easily, Dion said.
And perpetrators are always coming up with new tools of destruction.
"We think they're using spark plugs now (to scratch surfaces)."
It is a cat-and-mouse game where offenders are always introducing new tools and paints while the transit corporation experiments with new cleaning products and protective coatings.
"It's like a war between two clans," Dion said.
The MTC aims to remove graffiti within 24 to 48 hours. MEtro cars are inspected and swept every night, and washed thoroughly once a month. However, crews remove hate messages immediately.
Unlike painted graffiti, which has won recognition in some circles as an art form, scratchiti is almost universally regarded as vandalism.
Most consist of initials or simply scribbles.
"There are very rare instances where there's effort to make it artistic," said Eric (Deal) Felisbret, 44, a former graffiti artist and editor of www.at149st.com, a site that chronicles the history of graffiti in New York.
"It's looked at (in the graffiti community) as being trivial."
Felisbret explained that graffiti is divided into two categories: bombing, whose hallmark is tagging as many surfaces as possible, and burning, noted for its effort at artistry.
Male teenagers are responsible for most graffiti, but some offenders - like a Montreal man in his 50s who splashed his mother's name across the Berri-UQM station this year - are older.
Several cities, including New York, Philadelphia and Montreal, have created legal venues where spray-can Picassos can get the urge to tag out of their system.
But scratchiti appeals to a different crowd, such as bored students killing time between subway stops, Felisbret said.
Authorities arrest several hundred people a year for graffiti on the mEtro and buses, Desrosiers said. If convicted, they face fines of up to $500.
"These are people who like to defy authority," he said.
Experts agree perpetrators get their kicks from their handiwork's visibility.
"The best remedy is to remove it immediately," Desrosiers said.
According to the "broken windows" theory, graffiti and garbage promote crime and urban decay.
The theory has fuelled aggressive anti-graffiti campaigns in U.S. cities like New York and Philadelphia.
Last month, Montreal's central Ville Marie borough started enforcing a tough new cleanliness bylaw that carries fines of up to $2,000 for graffiti.
But Felisbret said cracking down on graffiti only increases the thrill for perpetrators.
Tremblay said he frequently speaks to youth about the exorbitant cost of scratchiti and other forms of graffiti.
"I say, 'You're destroying your future. Somebody has to pay for that.' "
But Felisbret said such warnings mean nothing to those who engrave careless scrawls on bus windows.
"I think they probably give it very little thought, or if they do, they don't care."
mascott@thegazette.canwest.com
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