No wonder Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is hell-bent on waging war on graffiti around town.
“I have a weekend home on Long Island and I go out of my mind when I see the graffiti. I plan on setting up video surveillance to capture graffiti vandals to enforce this,” Bratton told reporters Wednesday after a speech at the Harvard Club.
Bratton said his new program targeting graffiti vandals is also an essential tool in fighting gangs.
His announcement comes after The Post broke the story Saturday about cops using spray cans to black out graffiti across the city.
“We’ll be dealing with that graffiti as far as the vandalism aspect, the gangs or crews, if you will, use that to spread messages, as a way to mark their territory,” he pointed out, adding: “That’s how they convey threats to each other. Our vandals unit handles that and determines what we should look at.”
The Commish referenced a 14-mile stretch along the Long Island Expressway that is plagued by graffiti, which constantly reappears after it has been painted over.
“It’s covered up very quickly but they’re back at it again,” Bratton said of the vandals on the LIE. “We can’t just keep doing the same old thing all over again. We need to find new ways to basically make the arrest.”
Earlier in the event, an attendee asked Bratton about the increase in graffiti on city streets.
“My neighborhood has already seen a real explosion of graffiti,” the attendee said.
Bratton responded, “The issue of graffiti is something we will be addressing more significantly. We have a graffiti stat each week that is part of our traffic stat. I’ll be starting to attend that.”