Foreigners Responsible for 70% of NYCMTA Tagging

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/479074p-403027c.html

Eurotrash making marks on subways
BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Most guests enjoy city’s landmarks, but cops say European groups like
MOAS are sullying our subways. And taggers like Biser, responsible
for 70% of graffiti, cops say, are just doing it for pix to boost
Euro-reps. Subway graffiti is back - and Europeans are to blame.

Most of the major graffiti attacks on trains are being carried out by
twentysomething Europeans who want to leave their marks where the
graffiti culture was born, experts said.

They come from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark
and Norway to spray-paint their murals and elaborate tags - called
“pieces” - on trains, fully aware that the Transit Authority will
scrub them clean within hours.

The Euro-taggers don’t care that New Yorkers won’t see their work on
the rails: their main goal is to take photographs and videos of their
handiwork to bolster their reputations on the other side of the
Atlantic.

“The majority of the heavy graffiti is being done by foreigners,”
said recently retired NYPD Transit Bureau Lt. Steven Mona, who until
September 2005 was the commanding officer of the Citywide Vandals
Task Force.

“We’ve always had foreigners, but in the last five years we’ve seen
an increase.”

When Mona and his team reviewed last year’s graffiti hits, they
estimated that 70% were carried out by Europeans.

That includes the graffiti group “MOAS,” or Monsters of Art
Scandinavia, which painted its initials on trains stored on “layup”
tracks on Utica Ave. in Brooklyn.

Another tag spotted on a train hit on Utica Ave., “Biser,” is
identified on the

2

As a former New Yorker, this sure “cooks my grits”![:(!]

I was a kid back in the early 70s when the graffitti started showing up in huge numbers on the subway trains. Downright depressing as this “cancer” lasted for years. Adding insult to injury; there were a number of " political correctness, bleeding heart politicians in City Hall that proposed to provide selected subway cars for graffitti artists (train trashers) to show off their skills. Many New Yorkers were outraged (except for taggers of course).

It was a nice breath of fresh air upon reading that when David Gunn took over the transit authority, he made the cleaning up of trains and prosecuting taggers a top priority.[4:-)] On my last visit to New York back in the 90s, the MTA had performed an excellent job in cleaning up the trains and so many of the stations. [8D]

Hopefully this current dilemma will be a passing fad and won’t become the epidemic that it was back in the day.

To those that say “Well there are worse problems than graffitti” I would answer "Yes, and the lack of respect for public and private property is one of them! Especially in this case since it is taxpaying citizens that will pay for these tourists unwanted signatures.

It does not matter whether these creeps are foreigners or U.S citizens. What they’re doing is dead wrong.

3

May they all someday qualify for a Darwin award.

4

As I said in a similar thread, make no mistake. This is not art. If somebody wants to make art there are plenty of law abiding opportunities in our society to do so. They can enroll in a class at the local YMCA or community college or go to an art store and buy some stuff to do it at h

5

You could always come over here and return the favor…[:-^] [(-D]

Though NS (our major passenger railroad here in the Netherlands) has a similar policy of cleaning graffitti from trains.

greetings,

Marc Immeker

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Many of these “Euro taggers” are unemployed Europeans who still get big unemployment checks. How else would you get time to put this effort into something so unproductive. Most seem to be Skandinavians, a famous place for handing out big unemployment checks.

7

New York’s court system is part of the problem as well. With case backlogs, it seems that judges want to quickly wrist slap the defendents. That’s sending one heck of a message to these taggers.

If I’m not mistaken, after reviewing one of these cases a judge can easily impose a short jail time for these types of offenses, such as one week in a local Manhattan jail with some of New York’s gang members, rapists, and burglars. They just love Europeon accents!

It seems like that would be much more effective in “persuading” international taggers to think twice before trashing trains.

8

Send the whole lot to Rikers -eh? [:O] One night there would cure them of any subway tagging urges.

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Oh, BROTHER! [banghead][censored][censored][banghead]!!