Grand Terrace seeks help in graffiti battle

Unable to do anything on its own, the city is seeking help from its neighbors to get rid of a nagging graffiti problem.

[Peter]

It's well past time that local government officials come together and demand Union Pacific clean up the overpass. That bridge looks like hell for every person who drives underneath it every day. Obviously Union Pacific doesn't want to commit to cleaning it on a regualr basis. However, I think the poiticians will band together and force Union Pacific to do it.

[Food for thought]

Can the city remove the grafitti, and send Union Pacific an outrageous bill for the cities services? Or start citing Union Pacific; someone will clean it up after they get a few $10,000 citations for defacing the city.

[oh well]

yawn...
carry on

[The Spin Doctor]

Mr. Wall, the lead of your story is not objective and thus lacks journalistic ethics. You start with "Unable to do anything on its own..." Mr. Wall, please back up that claim. The City can do lots on its own and it completes its business each and every day.
If you are now a columnist for the Sun and therefore can inject opinion, I would think that your articles would be placed elsewhere in the paper. However, your lack of judgment, compounded by your editor's oversight during copy editing, has wrongly portrayed the City of Grand Terrace in a negative light.
Now if your lead would have said that the City cannot convince the Union Pacific railroad to remove graffiti, so it has asked for the support of its neighbors to help get the job done... well that would have been a more accurate lead.
However, unless you have proof to support your claim that the City cannot do "anything" alone -- then I recommend that you and your editors apologize for your mistake and retract the statement.
Here's a thought -- why wasn't your lead, "Unable to keep graffiti off railroad property and trains, not to mention the tons of diesel emission spewed each day into the air, the Union Pacific Railroad Corporation has said Kiss My Caboose to the Inland Empire." Now that would have been exceedingly accurate.

[hawk]

well just clean it and bill the railroad company and cite them for blight like they do everyone else

[Raising Kain]

I remember there was a time where if you were caught tagging you got beat bad, real bad, by the "street authorities" and it worked! dont know what happend.... but it looks like that time needs to come again

[my2cents]

So, Union Pacific is doing nothing about the unsightly "ghetto" graffiti on the rail crossing I-215 in Grand Terrance. Not very responsible behavior for a company that employs many local residents at its facilities and yard. I recommend contacting federal officials in Washington and area congressional representatives to call the head guy at Union Pacific on the carpet for failing to have a public conscience and do the right thing. UP has a complete and utter disregard for the communities which it passes through, particularly Grand Terrace and Colton.

[Bruce]

You cannot "battle" graffiti, but you can battle taggers. These little rat scum need to be caned severely, their parents fined, and they all need to do massive amounts of supervised community clean up.

[Miguel Robles]

The graffiti problem should be monitor after initial cleanup with sensors and cameras just like they do some Traffic intersections, and place the money after a cost analysis for saving's and used the money for other priorities. I'm sure technology has come a long way in recent years.

[Insider]

Railroads like Graffiti.
I herd this from people that work for Railroads. Metal requires regular painting to prevent rusting. These taggers provide free service to rail road. Paint all the Train cars and bridges you want.

I'm surprised a sign or ad in newspaper isn't taken out free tagging.... Great FREEWAY LOCATION

Railroads don't care about communities. They thumb the nose at AQUMD smog regulations. Idle 24/7 and just look at all the black rising from engines.

[Grrrrr]

Bruce wrote:

You cannot "battle" graffiti, but you can battle taggers. These little rat scum need to be caned severely, their parents fined, and they all need to do massive amounts of supervised community clean up.

100% agreed... the supervised community service should not include hanging out at the local elementary school helping to supervise the after school care kids and teaching the K-6 graders all about "the art" of tagging like the 15 year old boy at my daughters school. She had no idea what it was until he told her. He should be out cleaning up his mess that he and his fellow taggers created.

[Ken Keniff]

Why not just paint the bridge and then put a coat of wd 40 all over the ledges, so the next moron who goes to tag it will slip off and drop onto the freeway and then hopefully get hit by a big rig.

[Peter]

Because then the city would be liable for his death. Besides, more tagger than you think fall to their deaths from overpasses. Ask a CHiPee and they'll tell you. A semi trailer and a 16 juvenile make a nice painting after they collide.