Hard sentencing in Cleveland for graffiti taggers

From a colleague in Cleveland:

5 YEARS of Saturdays cleaning up the city! Tell me this is not your fantasy punishment for suburban assholes who come into the city to tag & vandalize!

(She witnessed a pretty vehement outburst about my attitude about this. After having wasted many hours dealing with this in Brookland.)

Re: this neighborhood email about sentencing graffiti taggers

Graffiti taggers Daniel “Peek” Horvat of Wickliffe and Danny “Chang” Zhang of Seven Hills pled guilty to numerous felony counts in Judge Judith Kilbane-Koch’s courtroom last month. Peek pled guilty to 24 felony counts, most of which were 5th degree felonies, and Chang pled guilty to a lesser amount. Sentencing took place today, September 10th, in Judge Judith Kilbane-Koch’s courtroom. Here are the details of the sentencing: Both Horvat and Zhang were each sentenced to 5 years of Court Controlled Sanction (probation).

Both have been ordered to complete 400 hours of community service for each year of probation (yes, this means 2000 hours of community service). They will be required to work every Saturday for 8 hours in the various neighborhoods that they vandalized. A graffiti task force, consisting of all of the affected Community Development Corporation areas, will coordinate the community service work to be completed. Details on how this will work will be communicated at a later date, but the judge suggested that the work could involve the shoveling of snow for elderly residents during the winter months. I assume there will be many details that will need to be worked out on this.