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San Jose police arrest two teenagers suspected of being notorious downtown taggers.

 

The graffiti tags featuring a cartoon rooster began popping up around downtown San Jose toward the end of last year. Soon graffiti cleanup teams were removing the toon tags from lamp posts, street signs and city benches on a daily basis.

Called the Toon Goons, the prolific taggers were becoming a thorn in the side of business and property owners in downtown San Jose.

"They were hitting downtown hard," said Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association.

And they were partly responsible for a huge upswing in graffiti. There have been more tags found in San Jose during the first four months of the year than were found in all of 2008.

But earlier this week, San Jose police arrested two high-school aged youth they say are the Toon Goons. The teens, ages 16 and 18, both lived in the downtown area and are facing multiple misdemeanor and felony vandalism charges, according to police.

"They both think of themselves as cartoon artists, or animators," said officer Erik Hove of the police department's Metro graffiti unit.

The 16-year-old boy, who police say signed his tags with the street name Joner, admitted to at least 23 incidents of graffiti. Hove said he had arrested the teen twice previously. The boy's case will be sent to the Santa Clara County Probation Department.

Jeremy Talamantes, 18, who police say used the street moniker Wage, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of two felony and two misdemeanor counts of vandalism. Prosecutors from the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office will decide what charges to file.

"Many juveniles don't see anything wrong splattering graffiti tags on public and private property," Hove said. "They think since people are already cleaning up, what's wrong with cleaning up more."

Police caught a break when the teens were stopped on their bikes in January by patrol officers who noticed the two were covered in paint. The teens had just finished some taggings, allowing the patrol officers to obtain "good evidence for us," Hove said.

The Toon Goons arrests come at a time when city officials are looking to deal with a recent spike in graffiti. The number of tags jumped from 2,594 in 2007 to 13,902 in 2008. So far this year, 19,240 tags have been recorded, according to San Jose parks and recreation officials who handle graffiti cleanup.

San Jose's anti-graffiti campaign includes eight city workers who erase tags, three police officers for enforcement and thousands of community volunteers who help with clean-up. Police recently have worked with other local law enforcement officials to create a tagger database, allowing them to share information and build cases for felony charges against prolific offenders. They also are planning to launch an Internet-based citizen reporting tool this year.

In addition, the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force, in collaboration with Santa Clara County's Juvenile Detention Reform group, has arranged for nearly 300 busted taggers and truants to serve their community-service hours cleaning up more than 7,200 tags.

Earlier this week, Mayor Chuck Reed called a special evening meeting of the Mayor's Gang Task Force to discuss the surge in graffiti.

"The problem is there's more younger people involved in doing it,": Hove said. "I don't think the major crews are that much more active. I'd say more of lower level kids who are out there doing damage. It's more accepted."

The San Jose Downtown Association is doing all it can to eradicate graffiti tags as quickly as possible, Knies said. Last year, the association formed Groundwerx, a program aimed at keeping downtown city streets clean. Groundwerx removed 12,000 tags during its first year, according to Knies, and cleanup crews photograph and document every incident in an effort to help police build cases against vandals.

The Toon Goons targeted much of the downtown area, including the Guadalupe Riverwalk, with slap tags, marked up stickers that are easy to slap on lamp posts, mail boxes and street signs. Joner allegedly even tagged the Groundwerx office once with a sticker.

But the most notable tag was found on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Signed by Joner and the Toon Goons, it read: "I have a dream, that together we can once & for all abolish Groundworx."

"It's surreal the amount of damage they're doing to public and private property," said Knies, adding that the downtown association plans on being "more relentless than the taggers."

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what the fucks up with all the dr pepper advertisement ... good job for making scrill but fuck the corporate cola crap.... when did coke start supporting graff?

 

hey man! i can't live without coca cola so i support 12oz having cola adds. ha. if they were only shasta cola adds tho.

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!@#$%

Moderator

 

"ok so we lost a lot of posts.

and it sucks.

 

this is why 12oz needs revenue.

as the site grew over years, costs have grown expopnentially.

not to mention the web ain't as free as it used to be.

 

so if you'd like it to not happen again, click on the ads once in awhile.

get a premium account.

 

thanks."

 

if yall didnt see this there you go.

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