When police officers think of gangs, their first thoughts are of violence, drugs and disenfranchised youth. However, there's another aspect that's sometimes overlooked and often under investigated: the graffiti that accompanies gangs.
The breakdown of graffiti in Canada mirrors the rest of the modern world. Most graffiti is hip-hop tagger style, with a smaller mix of generic, social, political and gang styles.
We can think of gang graffiti as the newspaper of the street. Reading it is intelligence gathering in its purist form and provides a snapshot of the gang culture in that community at the time it was placed.
Gang graffiti has several important purposes.
First, it communicates the presence of a gang. This is especially important when a new gang is formed, as this will often be used to announce its presence. This is when graffiti is at its most frequent and highest density. For the general public, graffiti will be the first indicator of a gang's presence. For police, it will corroborate incoming source information.
Second, graffiti can define territorial movements and areas controlled by gangs. In Canada, the use of gang graffiti for territorial boundaries isn't used to the same extent as it is in American cities, like Los Angeles. American gangs are often more focused on marking territories due to the high number of gangs that can exist in a small urban area.
Finally, graffiti communicates the messages of the gang, usually in the form of roll calls, threats and declarations. The most common are threats, usually to rival gangs and gang members, but on rare occasions, to police.
Deciphering the message
Gang graffiti tends to follow cultural lines in its construction and format. Some gangs use symbolic signs along with universal gang terminology. For instance, gangs will use "4/25" to mean "for life" and "187" to mean "death threat" since 187 is the penal code in California for homicide – another indicator of the influence of American gangs in Canada.
Generally gang graffiti includes the use of numbers linked to the alphabet. However, with Hispanic-influenced gangs, the graffiti can be more artistic in keeping with the mural background of Mexican culture. This artistic trend is starting to evolve as hip-hop taggers are joining the street gangs and bringing their skill set into the gang graffiti format.
The main difference between gang graffiti and other graffiti forms is the use of an identified gang tag.
One common feature among Canadian aboriginal street gangs is to merge the letters, for instance NP as one letter, meaning Native Pride.
While this gang tag is often written in the abbreviated form, it will occasionally be written out in full, to allow the reader to understand the meaning.
When the public sees graffiti they often incorrectly assume that it's all gang related. This is complicated by the fact that a large amount of gang graffiti isn't placed by a gang member but rather by a "wannabe" or someone connected with the gang culture.
There are defined characteristics to support its placement by a real gang member, including using personal identifiers in the graffiti such as their street name or initials.
As graffiti damage falls under mischief in the Criminal Code of Canada, it's not always properly investigated by Canadian police except in cities and areas that have developed anti-graffiti units or graffiti officers.
The advantage of investigating and charging those responsible is immeasurable. Since enhanced sentencing exists in the Criminal Code, having evidence that a gang tag is used by gang members further supports the Crown's ability to increase sentencing for offenders, when necessary.
There's also the extra intelligence that gang graffiti provides. Consider this example: I had been injured on the job and was away from work for three months. Upon my return, I mentioned to the head of the Saskatoon Police Street Crime Unit that the Indian Posse and Crazy Cree street gangs were in decline and that the lead operating gang was the Native Syndicate. He told me I was correct and asked how I knew this because he knew that I'd been away for some time. I told him that's what the gang graffiti was telling me.
Det. Sgt. Lee Jones emigrated to Canada from England in 2000 after serving 12 years with the British Army. After joining the Saskatoon Police Service (SPS), Jones developed his expertise in gang graffiti through his nine years working on gang graffiti criminal investigations. In 2006, he established a full-time anti-graffiti unit for SPS and later created an online graffiti investigation course.