Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Letters Outlining Tagging Penalties Planned : Graffiti: Santa Clarita’s school districts and law enforcement are cooper- ating in the Anti-Gang Task Force’s effort.

SANTA CLARITA — The city’s Anti-Gang Task Force is mailing letters to more than 12,000 households in the Santa Clarita Valley this month to tell parents what kind of punishment their children face if caught tagging.

Officials said the mailings were part of a cooperative effort with the five area school districts and local law enforcement.

“We’re going to mail it out to all students in the valley, from elementary school to high school,” task force chairwoman Cecilia Burda said. “We’re trying to educate the parents about the penalties facing their children and them in the case of graffiti tagging and vandalism.”

Those penalties include a fine, community service work and driver’s license suspension for the offender, and civil prosecution for damages and a parenting education program for parents.

All five superintendents, Santa Clarita Mayor Jan Heidt, Juvenile Court Judge Marcus Tucker, a local probation officer and a deputy district attorney who prosecutes juveniles have agreed to sign the letter.

Organizers hope that the mailer increases parent accountability and prompts family discussions about graffiti.

“We would like it to be a preventive letter, really,” said Dan Hanigan, chairman of the task force’s graffiti subcommittee and assistant superintendent of the William S. Hart Union High School District.

The school districts are paying for the mailers, and some schools are planning to distribute them with report cards or district newsletters.

Officials say it is important to instruct young children that vandalism is a serious offense.

“The majority of the taggers are from 12 to 15 years of age. They start in the fourth grade and keep doing it through high school,” Burda said. “This is a perfect training tool for a parent. Vandalism is a crime, and it is not an OK thing to do no matter how much peer pressure there is.”

Graffiti vandalism rose in Santa Clarita to 186 incidents during October, said Sgt. Lee White, head of the Santa Clarita Valley sheriff’s station anti-gang unit. Preliminary figures indicated an 11% increase in tagging through November.

City officials responsible for tracking graffiti incidents say Santa Clarita’s vandalism problem is worse than most people believe.

“In a lot of cases, our volunteers are so effective at removing graffiti, it isn’t being seen by the general public,” said Kevin Tonoian, a city administrative assistant who coordinates volunteer graffiti-removal efforts.

Recent budget cuts have hampered local law enforcement efforts to track and prosecute vandalism incidents as effectively as in the past.

White said the sheriff’s station is seeking the donation of an IBM-compatible computer to run software that catalogues graffiti markings by size, type, style and materials used.

The cataloguing system allows suspects caught tagging to be charged with additional counts of vandalism if similar tags are found during other graffiti incidents.