HOUSTON – Victims tagged by gang graffiti claim they have a weapon to fight back. Their silencer is an art form so effective that the mayor’s office grabbed one for the city.
Perhaps its taggers kryptonite because for over a year, a 10-foot wall painted with a mural stands untouched.
Around it, neighbors said fences and walls constantly get tagged with gang graffiti. Even now, threats of gang violence frightened the mural’s owner enough to protect his identity and not share his name.
“I’ve noticed in other parts of the city when murals go up there’s no more tagging on it,” he said.
Thought not entirely immune to vandals, murals power to deter taggers motivated the mayor’s office to hire three artists to paint over walls outside the Gulfton Salvation Army Thrift Store where MS-13 and rival gangs used to send one another messages.
Gang graffiti more than marks turf, according to Houston Police and the Mayor’s Anti-Gang Office. Gang tags send threats and disrespect rivals by crossing out or distorting other gangs’ symbols or names, officials said. Violence usually follows, officers said.
The store owner who wants to be anonymous watched it happen for 20 years in the Gulfton area. When taggers vandalized his store, the owner faced citations and fines from the city if he did not clean it up.
“We’d paint over it and within the week there’d be something on here,” he said.
So he bought paint and put an ad on Facebook offering his store’s brick façade as a canvas to any artist willing to paint a Houston space-themed mural. The store owner hoped it made things easier.
Now, he prays the gang graffiti silence lasts.