Graffiti

Graffiti impresario Banksy and airbrush-wielding guerrilla artists blanketed the walls of an abandoned London tunnel with offbeat murals Friday as part of a three-day stencil-art street party. Banksy marshaled more than three dozen international artists for what he's calling the "Cans Festival" -- and is encouraging visitors to contribute their own graffiti starting today. "I'm hoping we can transform a dark forgotten filth pit into an oasis of beautiful art -- in a dark forgotten filth pit," Banksy was quoted as saying in the Times of London, which carried a preview of the exhibition Friday.

On a quiet Sunday morning, a man wearing baggy shorts and a black hoodie stood in a parking lot and pulled out a can of spray paint. His burly right arm, inked with the image of a dragon, hung in midair as he worked the nozzle. Across the way, where railroad tracks met an overpass, a concrete wall covered with black letters displayed the work of neighborhood taggers.

In the macho, braggart, narcissistic world of Los Angeles tagging, no one can match the Metro Transit Assassins crew. Authorities said the group is responsible for some of the city's most notorious acts of vandalism, most notably L.A.'s largest tag: the giant, half-mile-long "MTA" scrawl that appeared last year along the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River near downtown.

A Cudahy councilman and his brother escaped serious injury and perhaps worse Monday night when a gunman sprayed their sport utility vehicle with bullets in an apparent ambush, authorities said. The shooting occurred at Atlantic Boulevard and Slauson Avenue in Maywood, as Councilman Osvaldo Conde, 48, and his brother, Erik Conde, 28, pursued a car carrying a group of taggers who had just vandalized Osvaldo Conde's business.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich wants to give police the ability to arrest "taggers" simply for hanging out together, without having to catch them in the act -- raising thorny constitutional issues as he lays the groundwork for a campaign to tackle the city's vexing graffiti problem. In an interview, Trutanich said his staff has begun amassing street-level intelligence and reviewing legal strategies that would pave the way for a series of injunctions targeting graffiti and "tagging" crews.

"Buket," the daredevil tagger who gained Internet notoriety for his brazen, daylight tagging of a sign over the 101 Freeway and vandalism of a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus, was sentenced Thursday to three years and eight months in state prison. Cyrus Yazdani, a 26-year-old San Jose State graduate who has developed a near-cult following, was on probation after pleading guilty in December to 32 felony vandalism counts. In July, he pleaded no contest to one count of felony vandalism and accepted financial responsibility for five vandalism incidents.

Opening a new front in the city's efforts to reduce tagging, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved an ordinance requiring that all new homes include a finish that is resistant to spray paint unless the owners promise to remove any graffiti themselves. The measure, which was unanimously approved, extends a provision in the Los Angeles Municipal Code requiring that new commercial buildings and apartments be coated to a height of 9 feet with an impermeable material, such as ceramic tile, baked enamel or a chemical gloss.

For months, a mysterious vandal has been slapping hundreds of "Who Is John Scott?" stickers on buses around Los Angeles. Authorities expected the vandalism to be the work of teenage "slap taggers," who hit buses, street signs and light poles with stickers advertising shoes, skateboards, music bands and sometime their own hand-drawn monikers. But the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's anti-graffiti detail got a surprise when it finally tracked down the man allegedly behind "Who Is John Scott?"

More than 50 people were arrested Wednesday in a massive sweep of taggers in the San Gabriel Valley and southeast Los Angeles County, said Sheriff Lee Baca. Authorities also seized weapons, narcotics and tools used for tagging. During the early morning sweeps led by sheriff's deputies, 51 people were arrested for a variety of crimes, including weapons and drug possession, while probation or parole violations were discovered at the homes of 36 others, officials said. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said they were not at home but are now being sought by authorities County social workers also took nine children into protective custody as the massive task force raided 174 locations looking for parole and probation violations by known offenders.

A 17-year-old boy was seen tagging graffiti on the center divider of the Pomona Freeway in Riverside early Saturday just before he was struck by vehicles and killed, according to the California Highway Patrol. Blake Locko of Riverside was standing in the westbound carpool lane just east of Hall Avenue about 2:30 a.m. when he was first hit by a car and thrown over a 5-foot-tall concrete divider into eastbound lanes, where he was hit by several other vehicles, the CHP said. Locko died at the scene, and one of the drivers was treated at Riverside Community Hospital for neck injuries.