Bashing can’t stop graffiti-buster
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Bashing can’t stop graffiti-buster
By KRISTIAN SOUTH – Sunday, 28 September 2008
A grafitti remover brutally bashed while painting over a tag earlier this month is back on the streets and determined to keep them clean.
Dave Campbell was hospitalised earlier this month after a thug smacked him over the head with a plank of wood, resulting in severe concussion.
"It was about 9am and I was on my knees crouched over, cleaning up some graffiti when a guy came up behind me and said , `You're wasting your time'," Dave said.
The 36-year-old was cleaning tags off the side of a central Wellington building on September 8 when he was clobbered by the unknown attacker.
"He must have smacked me over the side of the head with a plank of wood.
"The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground with a wound to my head. All I heard was him telling me I was wasting my time. I never even saw what he looked like.
"I was off work for about a week and a half with concussion," he said."
Dave was rushed to Wellington Hospital where he was treated and released several hours later.
"It just goes to show the mentality of these guys attacking someone at 9am on a Monday. "I still can't believe it happened.
Along with his graffiti-busting partner Ben O'Neill, he removes thousands of dollars worth of damage caused by tagging each week."
Dave works for Graffiti Removal Specialists, which cleans tagging from private, commercial and public property from Wellington to Palmerston North and the Wairarapa.
"A lot of it is a tag of pride for these guys and they're becoming a lot more aggressive about their work," he said.
Ben said the beating taken by his colleague demonstrated the territorial nature of the taggers."
Last week, Dave and Ben were called out to remove offensive graffiti on the Miramar Community Council's playground and art centre.
"They certainly don't take kindly to people like us removing their hard work. "They don't care about what they're doing or who they're offending and some of it is just sickening.
"They'd written across the windows, walls and even drew (male genitalia) on the children's play areas and wrote `f*** the police' in the area where they come to play," Ben said.
"We've cleaned up graffiti on places where they would have had to have hung a guy upside down off a bridge for him to be able to spray it," he said."
Dave said taggers were getting more creative to ensure their work stayed in place longer."
Churches were the worst-hit buildings.
"Things like that obviously makes it a lot harder for us to clean it up.
"But the most sickening thing is when they decide to tag a cemetery.
"But the most sickening thing is when they decide to tag a cemetery.
"I mean, what sort of person draws swastikas and penises on gravestones?
"I think a lot of it is being offensive just for the sake of being offensive."
Ben said tagging was a real problem in most neighbourhoods throughout New Zealand and one that needed to be urgently addressed.
"These guys seem to think that they're above the law and that they can do anything they want," he said.
"There needs to be a hard line put on these guys. They should be made to pay the consequence for what they're doing. If it's offensive … then the penalty should be more severe."
TAG ALERT: If you see a tagger in action, phone 111 immediately. Report all tagging to police. Take photos of tags to help police build a database.