You know, half hour an hour.
I come over and paint out the new stuff and it's less and less
because they're getting tired of getting their things painted over.
I guess.
Once or twice a month.
Long time Wallingford resident Denise Chase grabs a paint roller
from her basement and hits the streets of Seattle, cleaning up graffiti.
Chase loves calling Seattle home, but is heartbroken
to see graffiti overshadow the city's beauty.
When she sees a problem, Chase says she lives her life
choosing to be part of the solution.
So many people felt like they couldn't do anything.
They were paralyzed because it was so bad.
And so I can't get rid of graffiti in the whole city,
but I can keep my two little areas clean.
It all started with picking up litter at Woodland Park, where she often comes
for walks and brings her granddaughter on one of those walks.
She noticed the graffiti.
There's the profanity.
There's the anti-Semitic.
There are things that this path we're going to go up to leads to the zoo.
And there's families and little children.
And I have a grandchild, and I want her to be able to go to the zoo and enjoy
rolling in the leaves and not be looking
at litter and garbage and graffiti.
Chase says she'd
watch as city workers cleaned up the areas and then they'd get tagged again.
Sometimes the very next day.
It's all that bubble stuff.
There's one fella that really likes his name and he writes his name over and over.
So she decided to pigeon painting this bridge with that
classic gray we see on our freeways and city walls.
So this used to be tagged almost as soon as I painted it, and it's not anymore.
So this like I said, it's been over a month since I've been here
and there's been no tagging.
So it's been really is really nice.
It seems like we've come to some agreement because the graffiti artists
are not painting this out anymore and I'm leaving this for them.
You're bringing volunteers and the city together.
Her volunteer efforts were recognized by Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell last fall
when he held a press conference
announcing his new one Seattle Graffiti plan to tackle the problem
and invited Chase to illustrate how residents can help.
A day would be wasted if we didn't recognize, we want to hand you this.
This is a our one Seattle service award to Denise Chase.
Harrell says the writing was on the wall to create a comprehensive new approach
to clean up graffiti that brings together all agencies involved businesses
and residents.
A 50% increase in graffiti since 2019.
That's 20,000.
I'll repeat that number 20,000 reports of tags and graffiti vandalism.
But quite frankly, you don't need statistics to see
what's happening in Seattle.
Nearly 70% of reported or discovered graffiti is on city property.
Seattle Public Utilities, Parks and Rec, and SDOT are all working on the problem.
They need more resources as the surge in graffiti has outpaced abatement efforts.
Last summer alone WSDOT the department
in charge of the freeways, cleaned up graffiti on I-5 up to seven times.
The tagging is repetitive and overwhelming.
It's often unsafe for crews to reach areas
taggers hit like overpass that would require road closures to clean up.
The department says they're also short staffed.
There are 100 vacancies in maintenance and the need for specialized equipment
has a lot to do with how much they can take on.
We also have
challenges in tunnel paint, which is reflective
to brighten the tunnel and provide safety to the traveling public.
When that needs repainting, that requires specialized paint as well.
The mayor's plan has several key pillars, in addition to better collaboration
with different departments and funding, they'll be working with Seattle Police
and the City Attorney's office to bolster enforcement.
It didn't happen overnight,
and we're not going to be able to resolve this overnight.
Adiam Emery with the mayor's office says another main component of this one
Seattle graffiti plan is art, encouraging artistic expression
instead of graffiti around the city to deter taggers and inspire
those who want to share their talents in constructive ways.
All those retaining walls, which I considered to be a canvas, it's an asset
that we can pivot the narrative of like what we want to see on those spaces.
If we're left empty,
like the way you see it going down the freeway, people are going to tag it.
If we put in a mural that's like speaks to everyone
and brings our voice and our value within the city.
People have a tendency
not to tag those things because it's a creation of an artist.
That's that's my understanding.
Graffiti origins date back to ancient times.
Archeologists say more than 5000 tags of graffiti
have been found in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.
Tags back then are still what we see now,
mostly names, messages, drawings and quotes.
Modern graffiti in the U.S.
started in the late sixties and seventies in New York, when people would spray
paint names or images on the sides of buildings and subway trains.
The boundaries of artistic expression and vandalism are still often blurred.
Here in Seattle
Chase says it's going to take everyone to redraw the lines.
It takes government, takes individuals, takes nonprofit.
And so if we can all work together,
then we have a chance of really making a difference.
A difference
she's passionate about making one stroke at a time.
I just want my granddaughter to have the city that I know was here
many, many years ago when I first moved here.
So I do my little part.
To restore the city back to a cleaner canvas.