13 WTHR - Indianapolis News |City working to wipe out graffiti at parks

City working to wipe out graffiti at parks

Mary Milz/Eyewitness News

Indianapolis - It's a problem Indy Parks can't seem to get rid of and it's getting worse. The city is trying to wipe out graffiti at more than 130 playgrounds.

Freddy Brown has seen the writing on the wall and knows he has plenty of job security.

"Well, since they call me 'Fast Freddy,' as fast as they put it down is as fast as I get it up," Brown said.

Brown is Indy Parks' new graffiti man and it is a full-time job.

"Actually, it's every park, I've been to all of them," he said.

His boss calls the taggign at city playgrounds worse than ever before.

"We've notified park rangers that we're experiencing more graffiti than typical. They're doing routine drive-by inspections, but yeah, it's pretty hard to catch the culprits," said facilities maintenance manager Danny Swales.

Some of the graffiti contains words and symbols that aren't suitable for viewing.

"Got the little kids, want to bring them down here and there is vulgar language written all over the slide and everything else," Marty Haas said. "That's just stuff you don't want them to see."

"It just makes it look more trashy," said Jessica Walters.

Brown uses a power washer and a special cleaner called "elephant snot" to erase the markings, at least temporarily.

"It's an ongoing battle. The minute it gets cleaned up, it just opens space for more of it," said Indy Parks' Jenny Evans.

Indy Parks hopes for a more permanent solution. They're considering a clear coating that allows you to just wipe the spray paint off, but it is expensive - $100 a gallon. But, they say, it may be worth it to keep the work of big hands away from where the little hands play.

This year, the parks department also began offering graffiti art classes thru IPS, allowing students to use large canvases as opposed to playgrounds as a creative outlet. The classes also stress the cost of cleaning up graffiti from public property.