A top Los Angeles news story in February was the bottom-to-top tagging of an unfinished and derelict Downtown condominium project. While people argued over whether it was street art or vandalism, city officials erected a fence around the site and security patrols were instituted. That helped stanch the graffiti, as well as activities such as someone paragliding off a tower.
That might be out of mind now, but graffiti remains ever-present in the city. In July, there were 30,157 clean-up reports, according to publicly available MyLA311 service request data. That is the highest monthly total in more than a year.
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The figure is not a complete outlier, as there are commonly 25,000–30,000 reports per month (the count includes tags that eradication crews see and proactively paint over). The highest count this decade was the 36,506 reports in March 2021.
The COVID era produced more tagging than at any time in recent memory. In the final quarter of 2020, there were 96,000 graffiti reports. The count stayed north of 90,000 for four consecutive quarters.
Before last month, numbers had stabilized at a relatively low level. In the second quarter of 2024, the MyLA311 system logged 77,000 clean-up reports.
Hitting every neighborhood
Tagging, like water waste and illegal dumping, can be reported to the city by calling 311 or using the MyLA311 website or app. The city’s Office of Community Beautification is in charge of painting over graffiti and contracts with eradication crews working across the city. Tags are frequently cleared within 24 hours of being reported.
Graffiti happens everywhere in Los Angeles. From Jan. 1–July 31, more than 50 communities recorded more than 1,000 clean-ups. Boyle Heights topped the list, with 16,368 calls. The second-highest count was the 13,753 reports in Downtown.
Even well-heeled communities get hit with markers and spray paint. In the first seven months of 2024, there were 157 clean-ups in Brentwood, and 17 calls in Bel Air.
The Office of Community Beautification also operates a “paint bank,” with paints in “generic colors.” According to its website, these can be distributed to “community members as a way to eliminate recurrent graffiti on private property.”
How we did it: We examined publicly available MyLA311 service data from Jan. 1, 2020–July 31, 2024. For neighborhood boundaries, we rely on the borders defined by the Los Angeles Times. The city of Los Angeles may update past service requests with new information, or recategorize past reports. Those revised reports do not always automatically become part of the public database.
Have questions about our data or want to know more? Write to us at askus@xtown.la.
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