love this
I wrote this in the last article at the end of the day, but I think it is worth bumping to the beginning of this article:
its a shame that more of the commenters don't see this as a pretty shoddy attempt at inflating a crisis to get more tax dollars. If you look around in the streets, there is less new graffiti than ever. Nancy O'Loughlin took the reporter to a place that she and others have more or less tolerated as a graffiti-zone for more than 20 years, the [uneducated] reporter looks at and thinks to himself, "oh my goddd its out of control" when in reality he was probably looking at some stuff that was probably a couple of years old at least.
Also, anyone truly outraged by this should take a look at the ages of those wanted presently, and those arrested. Apart from the two out-of-towners which actually were arrested at the same time [aka, one case], all of them are in their early 20s. Compare that with some of the other high profile cases from a couple years ago where those arrested were in their late 20s and given relatively significant jail sentences. Considering that O'Loughlin et. al. are now going after those in their early 20s, I imagine that their careers [and damage] has nowhere near been as dramatic as those previously. And to hear her say, "O’Loughlin said she’s witnessing the most graffiti damage since the mid to late ’80s, referring to the era when graffiti “bombin’” hit Boston — about a decade after it turned the Big Apple’s subways into moving murals of brightly-colored bubble letters that symbolized 1970’s urban decay." Is just completely bogus. And is a shameful scare tactic to exact more money for the police budget. Just going through a LexisNexis search of boston graffiti, you can find comments on graffiti, each of which say, "this is the biggest ever"
In a 1999 article in the Boston Herald, referring to an arrest of three individuals, State Police Sgt. David Benoit said, ""These are the three biggest vandals, as a crew, that we have gotten together," he said. "I can think of very few others who have done so much damage." If they were so bad then, why wouldn't O'Loughlin refer to them rather than going all the way back to the 80s?
Nancy O'Loughlin, in 1994, ""I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty active summer between the painting and the violence associated with it."" (Didn't pan out, scare tactics on the eve of turning graffiti into a felony crime, punishable by up to three years in prison)In a 1993 Boston Herald article, O'Loughlin also said, ""One of these days," she says, "you're gonna find one of these kids dead with a can stuffed down his throat." [again, did not pan out]
And, the SHINING point that O'Loughlin and Kelley are full of BS is this quote, again from the May 29th, 1994 edition of the Boston Herald: "T officials estimate Bogart and other graffiti vandals cause several million dollars' worth of damage to the system each year."
OK - several million dollars a year back in 1994, 500,000 dollars a year today. AND TODAY IS THE MOST GRAFFITI SHE'S SEEN SINCE THE 1980s????
Needless to say, I am surprised that the writer of this article did not check his facts against those of previous articles written on the subject in this very same paper. Especially considering Nancy O'Loughlin's long time tendencies to fear-monger..
