By Sarah Stone

West flat tagged with gang-style graffiti

Oct 1, 2012 | 5:04 PM

The west flat area in Prince Albert awoke to some unpleasant scenes last week.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the Prince Albert police received numerous reports of gang-styled graffiti plastered on several homes, businesses, and St. George’s Ukrainian Church.

“The original complaint was in the 1100-block of 14th Street West and we responded to the complaint of four kids, that was the generic description, between 14 and 18 years of age wearing dark clothing, spray painting the rear of a duplex,” said Sgt. Kelly McLean.

“We rolled down there and we can’t find them. We start circulating through the area and as we do we see evidence of what they’ve been up to down there.”

The police counted 17 incidents of this spray-painted graffiti on garage doors, fences, and houses all within a few blocks.

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“Common sense would tell you that those are probably related,” McLean said, describing the graffiti as the letters ‘W’, ‘S’ with the number ‘306’.

 “I would say that generically you’d call it gang related graffiti.”

According to McLean, the image most likely means west side with the Saskatchewan area code.

“I don’t think I’d call it a general issue, we get that from time-to-time. It’s unusual to have that many that occur at one time, but there’s graffiti tagging that’s ongoing,” McLean said, adding that it is enough of an issue that the city has an anti-graffiti program.

One of the people who were affected was the owner of Corner Treats, Brian Venn. He said he gets “tagged” with graffiti quite often and there’s little that can be done.

 “I’m kind of used to it because they keep tagging the store because it’s a big canvas, but I mean I’m just glad the city has some kind of programs to help pay for it,” Venn said, adding this is the fourth time this year he’s been hit with graffiti.

“But it’s still an inconvenience when you try and clean up the neighbourhood and you have a bunch of yahoos that have nothing better to do than spray paint your building.”

“You have a bunch of good people in the neighbourhood trying to clean it up and make a difference in the neighbourhood and then you have some punks feel the need to wreck the place. That’s the frustrating part,” Venn said.

 “People down here are getting frustrated … I have nothing, but problems.”

At this point no one has been arrested and the incident is still under investigation.

The City of Prince Albert has an anti-graffiti program which ended in September. It provides homeowners with free paint kits that include one gallon of paint, plastic gloves, one tray and one brush or roller.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @PrinceAlbertNow