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'No End In Sight' To Tagging In Southwest Denver Neighborhood

DENVER (CBS4) - Police who patrol Denver's Bear Valley Neighborhood are searching for the vandals responsible for a major outbreak of graffiti over the holiday weekend.

Resident William Rodriguez, one of the victims, showed CBS4 the large letters that are still spray painted in red on his garage doors.

"I was away camping, came back yesterday and pulled up to this," said Rodriguez.

Tagging
(credit: CBS)

The damage was done to both homes and businesses across a one mile stretch on Dartmouth Avenue in the southwest Denver neighborhood. At least a dozen structures have what appears to be gang-related graffiti on them.

RELATED: Thornton Vandals Deface American Flag That Flew Over Afghanistan

"You just want to strangle them," said Bob Stein, who has owned the Bear Valley Car Wash for 30 years.

"It may be gang kids. I don't know," he said, pointing to the graffiti on the wall of the car wash.

Stein says the neighborhood is a frequent target of graffiti vandals and that over the years his surveillance cameras have caught countless taggers. In this case the vandals somehow eluded the cameras.

"They'll have backpacks with a spray can inside of them They will usually make a quick hit with an identifying tag that is not recognizable to me," he said.

Richard Larsen, one of the citizen volunteers at the Bear Valley Cop Shop on nearby Sheridan Boulevard, showed CBS4 the extensive graffiti complaint log from over the weekend.

"I don't know what you can do about it. That's the problem," he said. "It seems as fast as they take it down it comes back again."

Larsen says graffiti is a common problem when summer arrives and school is out.

"Ninety percent of the taggers are kids with nothing to do and no jobs. So they spend their time tagging," he said.

Police say graffiti is a way for gangs or other groups to mark their territory, and that catching the taggers is not easy.

"It's a repeated problem that I don't see any end in sight. It's kind of frustrating," Rodriguez said.

RELATED: Thornton Vandals Deface American Flag That Flew In Afghanistan

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