Like Cartwright, Officer Randy Campbell of the California Highway Patrol had tried the usual means of catching a criminal before turning to the Net.
For two years Campbell had been after a graffiti artist who signed his work "G.K.A.E." The tagger's work was displayed on brick buildings and freeway signs all over Southern California, even though the signs were surrounded with razor wire. Campbell, coordinator for the graffiti task force in the state's southern division in Torrance, Calif., says graffiti artists cost the state $200 million a year in cleanup bills. G.K.A.E. was particularly elusive, but Campbell eventually learned that the tagger was a man named Tim Badalucco, whereabouts unknown.
The breakthrough came when Campbell discovered that many taggers set up Web sites to display pictures of their graffiti. "When I download pictures of graffiti, along with an artist's name from the Internet, evidence is literally handed to me on a silver platter," Campbell says.
But more important, the Net helped Campbell figure out where to find **********. Through a newsgroup for graffiti artists, Campbell learned that ********** had moved on to Seattle, and he notified the police there. Soon the Seattle cops started noticing G.K.A.E.-signed scrawlings. A lucky beat officer in his squad car caught ********** red-handed at a wall, spray paint in hand, signing his moniker to his artwork on a wooden fence at a construction site. Campbell filed for extradition and handed over the downloaded evidence to prosecutors. *********** was convicted of felony vandalism.
Campbell has also set up a cops-only Web site that allows officers to log on and see samples of other infamous graffiti taggers who may be on the lam.
*edit- for crying out loud, remove the guy's real name!!!