Graffiti vandalism is back in a big way in Simi Valley, and members of the local crime task force say they want to know why.

At a meeting of the Simi Valley Community Crime Prevention Task Force last week, Debbie Ruud, police information and analysis manager, told the group that 2009 was the worst year on record for graffiti since the police department began documenting the property crime in 1991.

With 4,088 reported incidents, it surpassed Simi’s previous one-year record total of 4,038 in 1993.

Police Chief Mike Lewis said at the meeting he thought the increase in reported incidents could be due to an increase in staff on the city’s graffiti abatement team, which is responsible for recording and removing the spray paint.

“Officers in the field are not seeing a huge increase,” Lewis told the group.

However, the police chief was quickly corrected.

“We’ve spoken with (the) graffiti abatement team and they confirmed they’ve seen a steady and healthy increase,” Rudd said.

Officer Chris Lam, also in attendance at the meeting, agreed.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in graffiti,” Lam said. “There’s been a downtrend in gang graffiti, but it’s increased a lot overall.”

Sgt. Darin Muehler, who works in the department’s Special Problems section, attributed the increase to tagging crews, not gang members.

Gang graffiti, he said, is a way for members to get their name and symbols out, while tagging is typically done by troublesome teens looking for personal notoriety rather than claiming a group.

But no matter who commits the act of vandalism, it’s a difficult crime to police against, Muehler said.

“Catching a tagger is like winning the lottery. They can tag up a wall in two seconds and be gone,” he said.

After peaking in the early ’90s, the rate of graffiti in Simi Valley fell and then stabilized during the first part of the past decade.

In 2005 there were only 330 reports of graffiti documented. Suddenly that number jumped to 1,500 in 2006, 1,990 in 2007 and 3,074 in 2008 prior to last year’s peak.

Members of the task force, which includes representation from the Chamber of Commerce, the City Council, Simi Valley Unified School District, neighborhood councils and other community groups, were disturbed at the increase.

“It seems that there was a very specific moment in time that things started to change—and not for the better,” said Susan Fink, a community member on the task force. “What changed? Was there a personnel change or a smaller police presence?”

Lewis said that crime like graffiti often comes in cycles.

“Tagging gained popularity,” Lewis said. “Their thing is notoriety. They take pictures of it and put it on Facebook. They gain stature that way.”

City Councilmember Steven Sojka said it’s important for parents to understand the consequences of tagging.

“Maybe it’s time for us to reach out to parents and let them know they’ll be responsible financially,” Sojka said.

After reviewing the statistics provided at the meeting, Lt. Joe May told the Acorn he’s got some concern about the consistency in the manner in which the incidents are being reported by the department and the abatement team, saying that there’s a chance a single act of graffiti vandalism is being recorded multiple times. He said the police are looking into the matter.

Regardless, he said, the department and the city remain committed to getting all graffiti identified and removed within 24 hours.

“Here’s what the bottom line is, if the numbers are consistent. . . then we’re concerned about the spike in graffiti vandalism. If they’re not, we’re still concerned, but we want to make sure what we’re reporting accurately reflects what is occurring on the streets.”

Simi Valley is one of the few cities that track statistics from its graffiti abatement program.The city’s goal is to have all graffiti removed within 24 hours. To report graffiti, call the city’s graffiti abatement hotline at (805) 583-6444.