Working To Whitewash Graffiti In Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS -- With scrapers and paint rollers, volunteers whitewashed the remnants of graffiti tagging on the front of a former drive-in restaurant on Indianapolis' near west side.

The volunteers, mostly realtors, showed up to the intersection of Martin Luther King Junior Street and 29th Street to kick off a graffiti abatement program under the city's crime reduction focus zones. 

"There’s a growing trend with graffiti, it’s called individuals who are taggers, people who do it and they call it art. Well it’s not art if you’re using someone else’s canvas, it’s not art if it’s on a public building, it’s not art if it’s on a church," said Troy Riggs, director of public safety.

Tagging encourages more graffiti and creates an environment that inspires crime, Riggs said.

The Public Safety Foundation and the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors are funding the program. A specially equipped graffiti abatement truck will be used to remove graffiti, which will be staffed under a re-entry program for former prison inmates.

Property owners who have been victims of graffiti or tagging can call the mayor’s action hotline at 327-4MAC to request graffiti removal.