Just found this on the NY Times website - -
With $25 Million, M.T.A. Plans a New War on Subway Graffiti
Published: May 23, 2006
Adopting a drastic measure that recalled battles against subway graffiti from the 1970's and 80's, transit officials yesterday said they planned to spend $25 million to replace the windows in about 5,000 cars that are vulnerable to being indelibly marred by graffiti vandals using knives or etching acid.
A senior police official, appearing before the committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that oversees the subways, attributed the recent surge in graffiti to competing gangs seeking to deface or "tag" subway cars with their symbols.
"This is an underworld, a segment of society that doesn't see this as a crime," said the official, Chief James P. Hall, the commander of the police transit bureau.
Although most of the vandalism is being committed by New Yorkers, he said, it has taken on a global dimension with vandals from as far away as Europe having been caught putting their tags on subway car exteriors, and photographing their handiwork as a memento of their vacation.
Transit officials described the planned investment in windows as a partial solution. The replacements would resemble windows already in use in the newest of the system's 6,200 subway cars, which are coated with Mylar, a resilient polyester that can be peeled off and replaced when damaged by graffiti, keeping the glass underneath clean.
The protective coating is necessary because, unlike spray paint, scratches and acid-based graffiti are impossible to remove. "The battle is lost" once the windows are damaged, said Michael Lombardi, senior vice president for subways of New York City Transit, a division of the authority.
Some transit officials said the plan did not go far enough, and urged the authority to consider more vigilant steps, like equipping trains with cameras to capture vandals in action.
The chairman of the transit committee, Barry Feinstein, said the authority should hire security guards for each of its depots and storage yards to supplement the work of the police and to keep vandals out.
"This becomes a contest" among vandals, he said. "We need to get our arms around this, and from what I am hearing, we are not."
Mr. Lombardi said $25 million would be included in a proposed 2007 budget that the authority is to consider later this year. If approved, he said, $10 million will be spent to buy and install the new windows and $5 million will be used annually for three years to remove graffiti.
Chief Hall's description of gangs trying to outdo one another in defacing subway cars was reminiscent of the 1970's and 80's, when the subways were coated in painted graffiti, offering a symbol of a city run amok. Although the current surge is not as pervasive, graffiti applied with knives and acid is more destructive.
And, Chief Hall added, policing the problem is just as difficult today as it was in the past. Vandals armed with knives or etching acid can deface a subway window "in under 10 seconds, and make their exit," he said, and those using spray paint often make their mark after midnight, sneaking into tunnels or storage yards.
Mr. Lombardi said he could not provide an estimate as to how much the transit agency was spending to remove scratches or acid-based graffiti from windows. But for now, he said, only windows that are defaced with profanity or racial epithets are replaced, leaving the scratches and acid scrawls.
In some cases, train cars that have been marred by a large amount of graffiti are taken out of service for hours of repairs, leading to service disruptions, Mr. Lombardi said. He said the number of such major graffiti attacks, which require at least eight hours of work in terminals, had nearly doubled last year, to 101, from 52 in 2004. So far this year, there have been 72 similar cases, he said.
While graffiti arrests in the subway system declined last year, to 110, from 149 in 2004, they have surged so far this year to 122, according to police records.
Under a city law that went into effect this year, etching acid, typically used by artists who work in glass, cannot be sold to people under 21. Chief Hall said that in a recent undercover investigation a 17-year-old had not been able to buy the acid at several stores, but that many young vandals arrested for graffiti vandalism had easily bought the acid on the Internet.
New York City Transit officials said they had security guards assigned to several subway depots and yards, but declined to respond yesterday to Mr. Feinstein's proposal about hiring more to protect subways from vandals.
The officials said that the proposal to put cameras in subway cars was already under consideration and that discussions were under way with several companies that manufacture video monitors. But they said it was too early to say how many of the cameras would be used in subway cars, or when.
The transit agency has budgeted $25 million to put cameras in hundreds of buses and at the entrances of about 60 subway stations, but subway trains are not included in that plan.