Tagger time bomb

North Shore City Council, Police and Graffiti Trusts are working hard to clean up and prevent graffiti through the Tagger Tracker pilot programme.

The council committed to supporting the programme last July in consultation with the North Shore Safer Communities Reference Group.

Tagger Tracker is a regional database in which information is collected about tags (graffiti) identified throughout the North Shore.  A graffiti analyst collects images of tags and works with Police, Intel, community constables and agencies to match tags on the database.  The database will be extended and become regionally linked.

North Shore City Mayor George Wood, a former Police area commander, is a strong advocate of the initiative.

Mr Wood is calling on Local Government New Zealand and the Minister of Justice to support the Police-led regionwide graffiti eradication programme and investigate the value of making changes to the Summary Offences Act 1981 concerning police powers of arrest and seizure of graffiti instruments and penalties for offending.

He backs the Shore community's zero tolerance of tags and is proud of his council's spirited response to the threat.

"Although we have a long way to go before we eradicate tagging from our city, this is an extremely well focused project that is moving along with huge leaps and bounds.

"To date there are 7890 tagging images entered on the database," he says.

"We're working with six other local authorities on the Auckland Region Graffiti Free Project which we'll officially launch soon."

The Ministry of Justice is proposing a New Zealand Graffiti Strategy and North Shore City Council has provided valuable information to support this proposal.

ENDS

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