New York's City Wide Vandals Task Force fights graffiti

Lt. Steve Mona, commander of the anti-graffiti squad. "I'm not an art critic, I'm a cop. I know what a crime is." Photo: Robert Caplin/NYT.

In "Cat-and-Mouse Game, With Spray Paint," the New York Times reports about New York's fight against graffiti.

On flickr, there is a photo group of BORF lovers, called "BORF Spotting." One of the posters laments that BORF faces up to four months in jail, and looks forward to his release and renewed assault of DC Streets.

Photo by Allisonisfamous via flickr.

At the same time, you get coverage like this of DC neighborhoods in yesterday's Post "Dwellings, a gifts and home furnishings store that opened in April, is a bright spot sharing a stretch of sidewalk with businesses that appear closed or rundown. " People's expectations of what quality spaces are supposed to be, regardless of the differences in opinion that were communicated in the "Reader Comment" entry yesterday, aren't consonant with graffiti. It is a living, breathing example of the Broken Windows theory. (Also see the writeup of this "defensible space" project in Chicago.)