Wiping out graffiti — West Valley City renews fight against tagging

WEST VALLEY CITY — There's a good chance that in 24 hours, there will be more graffiti on the white vinyl fence Jacob Shafizadeh just scrubbed clean.

It's practically a given, since the fence is on a busy road, highly visible, in an area that's known for being tagged. And the dark gray, beat-up car that pulled over to the side of the road when its passengers saw what Shafizadeh was doing almost guarantees more graffiti.

The car stayed just long enough, windows rolled down, for the passengers to make a mental note of the markings before rolling away. They'll probably be back, Shafizadeh says, either to replace their own scraggly black paint or to take over the territory that was initially marked by some other gang.

Either way, it doesn't matter. As West Valley City's newly appointed graffiti officer, Shafizadeh will be back, too.

"The quicker we can get it off, the less people will see it," Shafizadeh says as he continues working and the car drives away. "If another gang doesn't see it, that's even better."

Tracking down and getting rid of graffiti in West Valley is Shafizadeh's job, and he loves it. It's been five years since the city had a dedicated graffiti officer who focused only on removing graffiti, but in that officer's absence, a renewed fight against the proliferation of graffiti in West Valley has grown to be the city's No. 1 priority.

In the three weeks since Shafizadeh was hired as a graffiti hunter, his efforts are already making a difference and hopefully having a long-term impact, said city manager Wayne Pyle.

"It's not the graffiti in and of itself that's the problem," Pyle said. "Graffiti represents lawlessness, lack of concern or care and a lack of willingness to be good citizens. If we can take care of that on a home ownership level, it will obviously help crime in the future."

The city has plans to install hidden cameras in key locations to nail whoever makes a habit of waging the graffiti war. Soon, Shafizadeh might have a camera that will record the GPS location of each graffiti hit so police can record and graph the incidents and triangulate which gangs live where.

Since gangs usually leave graffiti on areas and neighborhoods where they live, that could help police track down the perpetrators.