Borough Park Building Can’t Escape Graffiti Artists

An unoccupied one-story building located at 6323 17th Avenue has been hit by graffiti artists 14 times since 2010. The New York Daily News is reporting that the building, which is located right next the 18th Avenue N station, is the most popular spot for vandals in all of Brooklyn.

Because of all the love that graffiti artists give the building, the gray rolldown shutters have been painted over four times every year from 2010 to 2012 and twice already in 2013.

Local resident Ray Cheng was flabbergasted over all the abuse the building has received in recent years.

“It’s insane that they’ve had to come here 14 times,” Cheng told the Daily News.

In the past three years, the Bloomberg administration has cleaned a staggering 22,415 graffiti tagged walls in Brooklyn alone, deploying 22 specialized trucks that can power wash the painted surfaces clean. Despite the effort to keep the walls free of graffiti, 177 buildings have needed repeat cleanings five or more times since 2010.

In July alone, the NYPD has made 532 graffiti arrests throughout the city with 100 of those coming from Brooklyn.

With numbers like these, it could be seen that fighting the war on graffiti is a lost cause but the NYPD is employing methods that seek to turn vandals into role models:

[F]our men…on July 6, were busted tagging in Bensonhurst’s Calvert Vaux Park.

The four — Luis Paez-Rodriguez, Carmelo Sanatan, Jason Rosenberg and Benjamin Dashevsky — originally claimed the silver, red and yellow paint tag was part of a mural for a friend who died.

But two have agreed to avoid jail by serving three days in a new program that creates anti-violence murals.

“The murals will not only give them the opportunity to give back to their communities, but it will give them a sense of pride in their constructive creations,” said Sandy Silverstein, a spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.