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Hi, I'm Dave Huber.
I'm a Community Services Officer with the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department
and I'm currently assigned to the Graffiti Removal Unit.
My job is to remove the graffiti from the unincorporated areas of Sonoma County.
I was called by this property owner to remove this graffiti.
This is gang graffiti, so this is something I'm going to take care of today.
So I'm going to get dressed
and we're just going to paint right over it and make it disappear.
Now we're getting ready to buff this out.
It's not the same color.
It would be better if it was almost perfectly matched…
but you can't be perfect all the time.
The whole idea is to get rid of the graffiti...
and show them that we're not going to put up with this.
If it takes two coats, I put on two coats.
It only takes a few minutes more.
The best thing about it is that usually people in the area
are appreciative of what we do when they see this gone...
because it makes people nervous and uncomfortable
when they see the gang graffiti around here.
In the course of a day, I can cover up anywhere from two tags to twenty.
I've covered as many as fifteen different tags at a single location.
So this is the result after I'm done with the graffiti job.
It makes it look like it wasn't there.
This is a good example of a "tag". Just single letters...
they spray it up in one color, they're done and they're out of here.
This is a good example of a "throw up".
You have your fill-in and your outline, it takes a few minutes to do
and it's done and then the person can get out of here before getting caught.
This is an example of a "piece", short for "masterpiece".
It takes someone anywhere from ten minutes to an hour to complete.
It usually takes several different colors, two to ten colors.
They usually do it in an area where the risk of getting caught is very low.
The difference between graffiti and art is with graffiti you did not get permission.
If it's art you got permission from the property owner, the city, or the government.
A lot of the graffiti is very artistic.
There's a lot of talent out there,
but it needs to be put to better use, in a positive way.
We're out here today to cover up this graffiti because this doesn't look very good.
The problem is that one gang tags this house,
no-one cares what it looks like,
the other gang comes through and they tag over it.
This goes on and on...
The reason to remove graffiti within the first twenty-four hours
is to prevent things like this from happening.
You don't want your neighborhood looking like this.
If homeowners would just keep a bucket of matching paint close by with the roller inside,
they could just pull the top off the bucket, take out the roller,
attach the pole, cover the graffiti, and they would be done in minutes.
It doesn't take that much time,
and this is the result that you get.
You'll have the graffiti covered over and help prevent further vandalism to your property or your neighbors'
and it keeps your neighborhood looking nice.
And that's the result.
One of the cool things that I get to do
is take out kids that have court-ordered community service hours,
anywhere from ten to one hundred hours.
I get to spend a lot of time with them,
they get to know who I am and I get to know who they are.
Sometimes I can make an impression on them and maybe change their lives.
Sonoma County is a work of art all by itself.
We can help keep it that way by all of us working together.