By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion, and City Attorney Ann Davison announced charges against 16 people for graffiti in and around Seattle. According to Manion, it cost more than $100,000 to clean up graffiti by the 16 charged individuals.
One tagger whose name came up frequently in the charging papers, Joseph Johnson—best known by his tag GRIDE—died earlier this year.
The investigation took more than a year, according to Manion, who declined to estimate the cost of investigating, arresting, jailing, prosecuting, and potentially imprisoning the 16 charged individuals.
“I can tell you that I’m sure that it cost way less than $6 million for us to bring this case, but we know that in the city of Seattle alone [it costs] $6 million to remove graffiti, and that does not consider the expenses that private business owners have to spend,” Manion said.
According to Harrell’s office, the $6 million includes all annual expenditures for an interdepartmental team that includes the Office of Arts and Culture, Seattle Center, Finance and Administrative Services, Seattle City Light, the Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Public Libraries, Seattle Parks and Recreation, and Seattle Public Utilities. It’s unclear how much of that is direct graffiti abatement. Harrell’s “One Seattle Graffiti Initiative” includes 11 full-time employees in the parks department, including executive-level staff and nine “graffiti rangers.”
Charging documents show that much of the evidence collected over the past year stems from a publicly available documentary called “Make It Rain,” posted on Youtube in June. Investigators watched the video (which is dedicated to Johnson’s memory) and compared it to publicly available images on Instagram and mug shots of the featured taggers, most of whom had arrest records already. In addition to the videos, some of the charges stem from arrests made as far back as 2021, as well as messages and videos on phones seized by police.
Tom Graff, president of the Ewing and Clark real estate company and the head of the group Belltown United, told reporters that graffiti has made his neighborhood, and the condo tower where he lives, feel unclean and unsafe.
“How would you feel if your garage door was spray-painted [by] a tagger?” Graff said. “That happened on my tower. … How would you feel to drop off your child in a school that has its front door covered with a graffiti image? You would not take your child there, and we expect the people who live and work downtown to put up with it, and it is unacceptable, and it has to stop.”
Manion is charging all 16 suspects with second-degree malicious mischief, a Class C felony that carries a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of $10,000. She said her primary goal is to make the taggers pay restitution to all the property owners they have harmed.
“We are seeking accountability for what amounts to felony- level behavior, so it is appropriate to file felony charges,” Manion said. “It is not the jail time and the incarceration that we think will make a difference. It is getting folks to pay for the damage that they have caused.”
During the press event, officials repeatedly offered their own definitions of what is, and isn’t, “art.”
Manion insisted that there is a “clear distinction between art” and “illegal vandalism.” Art, she said, includes government-sanctioned wall murals displayed in “appropriate outlets for talented artists and appropriate places for them to display public art,” like the county-funded murals visible to light rail riders in SoDo.
Art, Graff added, is an officially sanctioned mural that “the landlord approved,” like 12 city-funded murals in Belltown that received city funding. “The artist was assigned this wall,” Graff said. “It is not done randomly, and it doesn’t damage the property.”
Art, Harrell said, might include a freeway wall that, with approval from the state Department of Transportation, might be used as “a canvas that can be painted by an artist, some of our beautiful sunsets, sunrises, or some of our Native American art.”
What isn’t art? Manion gave a few examples. “Dangling above freeway lanes to tag a traffic sign is not art,” she said. “Destroying a mural in Kent with a tag is not art. … Tagging Metro buses and Sound Transit cars is not art.” The charging documents say graffiti tags exist for two purposes, and art is not one of them: They can either be “ideological”—a category that includes hate speech—or designed for “fame and glory.”
The history of government officials deciding what is and what is not art has, shall we say, a long and ignominious history.
But even assuming officials’ definition of “art” (to summarize: pre-approved murals; sunsets and/or sunrises; “Native American art” generally) is partial and not didactic, Seattle has an obsession with graffiti, cleanliness, and the need for “order” that warps city spending and serves as cover for cracking down on people whose ideologies (or existence, in the case of encampment “cleans”) conflict with official government priorities.
Good morning,
As an artist I get why tagging would be an appealing way to express yourself. Making art is like dating. Generally you experience far more rejection than anything else.
I received my BFA thirty four years ago at the ripe old age of twenty eight. I’ve never managed to get into a gallery and never sold anything. My house is filled with hundreds of works of art. Except for two pieces in the living room, it’s all relocated to the basement where it’ll never be seen by anyone. When I die, I’ll be lucky if any of it makes its way to Goodwill. Yet, I continue to make more. Why, I don’t know.
So, as you can imagine I have a great deal of empathy for taggers need to be seen. But it’s still wrong to force yourself on to other people. No, still means no. I think that on a planet with more than eight billion people the one ethical standard we all need to follow is to simply respect each other’s space.
I agree that any defense of curbing graffiti based on the aesthetic/creative value of the act, is not a winning argument. What matters most is consent and the granting of permission to spray permanent chemicals all over your personal belongings.
Imagine this actual scenario I recently experienced. I worked my rear end off for six or so months and had a little left over after living expenses and I really wanted to install a new double insulated wood window. I couldn’t make the window myself, so I just spent $2,500 on a new wood window and a week of my free time on weekends installing this window and then within a week, the glass gets acid-etched and the frame carved with various initials and epoxy painted. Yes, tough luck for me, but I have standing to be rightfully upset. Moreover, I should be compensated fairly to get the damage fully repaired but also payment for my time lost dealing with getting it back to the way it was prior.
Erica’s callous disregard for human capital is a familiar refrain from journalists who would like to be on the cool side of this discussion rather than on the side of fairness, justice and respect for others. If you haven’t had your car tagged inside and out, your laptop covered in paint, your favorite clothes dunked in Rustoleum, or your front door defaced with dope signatures in marker, then you don’t really have standing to disregard the care others put into making and maintaining buildings. The underlying argument for this defense of graffiti is intellectually poorly thought-out. I would rather she defend the destruction of her own personal property at the hands of other creatives and argue that everyone should do the same. That would be a much more interesting position to take.
It’s bad form to tag an existing mural or a street sign. I don’t personally care, but I understand why financial interests object to tags on billboards and active businesses. But claiming that it’s a safety issue is silly and fussing about paint on blank concrete next to the highway is pointless.
I guess you’ve never had to clean graffiti off your building, walls or fence. It’s expensive – near impossible to completely remove and sometimes perpetrators come back. I’m glad they are cracking down. I’d love to see a supervised chain gang of graffitiers washing the walls of the 99 tunnell and 520 tunnel.
So they would throw Banksy in jail….
These local taggers are far removed from Bansky / good street art (it’s the visual equivalent of dogs pissing on the neighborhood fire hydrant).
If you want to see real art, see the sanctioned murals off Marginal (a few blocks north of the first avenue bridge). If that was the quality, no one would be complaining.
Oh my gosh they’re gonna chop off their hands!
Low-skill derps just throwing up tags are annoying, and I do think that tagging (or entire pieces) done to existing art are pretty inexcusable — looking at the nitwits who wrecked the community piece at Aurora / Holman, to name but one. But that “definition?” Our politicians are apparently just as skilled at art criticism as they are at budgeting or politics. Manion and Graff can both pound sand.
I’d like to see the taggers sentenced to removing the graffiti; in particular that of any rivals. Why should we be paying $6M/year? Let them clean it.
I think of their messes not as art, but as pathetic dogs peeing on things to mark territory – they’ve turned parts of our formerly fair city into one giant fire hydrant. UGH!!!
Not feeling a whole lot of sympathy for taggers. As far as I can tell, it’s selfish and forced down everyone else’s throats. The politicians should’ve simply not tried to answer the trick question of “what is art.” But Erica, your slightly snide attempt to make fun of them is just as specious. Same for your characterizing Seattle as being obsessed with graffiti, etc. You could just as easily argue that Publicola is obsessed with defending self-centered paint splatterers.
Wonder what Manion considers legal vandalism?
Art must conform to the state or be annihilated!
When it is on your own property
Property? You don’t seem to know what kind of hand choppers own this town.