Dan Jaramillo, a Los Angeles Police Department anti-gang detective in the Hollenbeck Division, looked for the usual spent casings and bullet holes when he received a call in October to investigate the shooting of a 10-year-old girl and a 19-year-old boy.
It was clear from the start that it was gang-related. But which gang? There are 37 in the East Los Angeles area.
The killers might as well have left a signed confession. Messages tagged onto a concrete wall read like street hieroglyphics. The tragedy had started with the male victim's gang tagging in the suspect gang's territory. Detectives confirmed the rival gangs' names, which were written out in bright spray paint.
Although most police say graffiti is a nuisance and should be removed, some say it can be a crime-solving tool.
Law enforcement officers know that to gang members, walls are like newspapers, which detectives read closely.
A renewed effort by activists and the City Council to clean up graffiti will affect an important tool used to decipher gang activity, some law enforcement officials said.
The cleanup effort was launched in the wake of a new report showing Los Angeles graffiti rising 24% in a 10-month period from 1999 to 2000, calculated in graffiti removal by square foot.
Calls to the Operation Clean Sweep graffiti hotline increased 5% during the same period.
In January, Los Angeles City Council members proposed increasing the budget for graffiti removal by $3.1 million and stepping up coordination with state and county agencies to combat the spray-painted messages and drawings. The council will discuss the proposal during budget hearings this spring.
Some detectives and experts say graffiti doesn't tell law enforcement officials anything they don't already know.
Carlos Sanchez, anti-gang detective in the LAPD's Foothill Division, which is plagued with more than 30 gangs of many ethnicities, said graffiti is a clue but does not necessarily help him solve crimes.
Malcolm Klein, a professor emeritus of sociology at USC who has researched gangs for four decades, said that in all the gang-related trials in which he has testified, graffiti never served as a major clue. Graffiti-writing is simply about attracting attention, he said.
"Who's putting his name up doesn't tell you anything about the guys that aren't," Klein said.
But Dave Demerjian, former chief of the hard-core gang unit in the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, said graffiti can aid investigations.
