Council Advances Bills Expanding Power to Prosecute and Fine Graffiti Taggers, "Nuisance" Properties
A Rob Saka amendment expands the violations for which police can crack down on property owners, to include violations of a King County law regulating septic tanks and county animal control rules.
By Erica C. Barnett
The Seattle City Council's public safety committee, headed up by Bob Kettle, advanced two bills their advocates argued are critical to public safety in Seattle on Tuesday.
The first would further criminalize graffiti, which is already illegal and subject to significant fines, by giving the city attorney (currently Republican Ann Davison) the power to bring a civil action against graffiti taggers and fine them up to $1,500 per violation, meaning that a prolific tagger could owe tens of thousands of dollars to the city.
The second will make it easier for the city to bring abatement actions against property owners, up to and including shutting down a business or tearing down a residential property, by expanding the list of offenses that count toward a "chronic nuisance property" determination and making property owners legally liable for things that happen outside their property, such as drug use, prostitution, or—under new amendments added in committee—littering, violating county health regulations, or noise violations.
The council has been discussing how to deal with graffiti, which they argue elected officials are more than capable of distinguishing from "art," for years. It's an obsession shared by Mayor Bruce Harrell and Davison, whose presentation on the proposal last month focused on the fact that graffiti artists show off their work on social media (see screenshot above).
Graffiti, Nelson said Tuesday, is "probably the single most common complaint I get from my constituents as a citywide council member, and so I am in strong support of any legislation that will make it easier to make people accountable for their actions."
Kettle and committee vice-chair Rob Saka both supported raising the fine per tag from $1,000, the amount Davison originally proposed, to $1,500, on the grounds that—as Saka put it—most prolific taggers are "well-heeled." Kettle piled on, adding that the people who throw up graffiti "used to be the younger white males, teenagers, 20s, but they've grown up to be 20, 30, sometimes even 40, and, as noted, with careers of their own."
It's unclear where Kettle and Saka got the idea that taggers are mostly older adult men with well-paying jobs. During her presentation last month, Davison presented some data about graffiti referrals to the City Attorney's office showing that over the last five years, 85 percent of the 200-plus people referred to her office for graffiti violations were male, and 79 percent were white. The evidence that these men are well-to-do appears to have come from the fact that a majority of the 17 people prosecuted in county court for graffiti last year were able to afford an attorney and pay court-ordered fines.
As a point of comparison, the fine for animal cruelty in Seattle is $500.
The original bill would have allowed the city to go after people who "encouraged" taggers by, for example, praising their posts on social media. During a presentation to the committee last month, Davison repeatedly denounced people who "promote themselves on social media," showing slides with Instagram posts to demonstrate that, "sadly they have people that are encouraging them."
An amendment from Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth stripped out the language about "encouraging" graffiti, which Hollingsworth pointed out could raise First Amendment concerns. Hollingsworth did vote for the underlying bill, however, agreeing with the rest of the committee that the threat of large fines could serve as a deterrent to prevent people from tagging small businesses and churches. H
Hollingsworth agreed with comments from Nelson, Saka, and Kettle about the supposedly clear differences between "art" and graffiti (Kettle noted that he likes the sanctioned "Henry" cartoon murals all over town), saying, "I am a big fan of art and the and graffiti in places that it's supposed to be at, where it's invited" by property owners.
After moving the anti-graffiti bill forward, the committee turned to legislation to dramatically expand the list of offenses that will allow police and prosecutors to declare a business or residence a "chronic nuisance," a designation that allows the city to take action against a property owner such as shutting a business down.
The legislation, proposed by Mayor Harrell, already proposed making property owners liable for violations that happen "in proximity to" a business or residence, if police can establish a "nexus" between whoever commits the violation and the property, such as a patron who leaves a club and uses drugs outside. If a property has three or more nuisancely violations within 60 days, or seven within a year, police can take action against the property owner, including by revoking their business license.
Saka proposed two amendments to expand the penalties and scope of the already-expanded nuisance law. The first, much like his amendment increasing the fine for graffiti, boosts fines for nuisance violations by 50 percent, so that violators can be fined $750 per day (up from $500) and up to $37,500 for failing to cooperate with police attempts to abate the nuisance (up from $25,000). These 50 percent increases, Saka said, were necessary to keep up with "inflation" since the original nuisance bill was adopted in 2009.
An second Saka amendment added several items to the list of serious offenses that could give police an opening to shut down a business or fine a residential building owner for activities on or near their property. The new reasons for abatement include selling, buying, or possessing stolen property; illegal dumping; noise violations; and a number of King County Health Code violations that the Seattle police are not in charge of enforcing.
These King County laws including provisions on illegal dumping, rodent control, and sewage, plus an entire code section on animal control, which bill describes, apparently erroneously, as "contaminated properties," a phrase that does not appear in that section of the county code.
The section of Saka's amendment about sewage violations is even confusing (so much so that Nelson told Saka she didn't know what that part of his amendment was even about); the section of code it refers to is about on-site sewage systems, also known as septic tanks, which don't generally exist in Seattle.
1) Where can a I get a lucrative job as a Graffiti artist
2) "Henry" is not art and and extra fines should be levied for it.
3) Is it still graffiti if a business "invites" it?
Back to the era of Darth Sidran!