The brick wall along Walton Way has become a message board for thugs, a slate for dueling vandals to argue over which gang runs the neighborhood, the Bloods or the Folk.
With the wall's proximity to a busy road, a lot of eyes are drawn to the white heart with devil horns, wings and a devil tail, crossed out by a black X. The building's owner, a pediatrician living in Martinez, is aware of the graffiti but won't clean it up, and the beef keeps going and going.
Some proactive chemical scrubbing might bring the argument to a halt, gang prevention expert Devon Harris said. Considering that a riot broke out at nearby Academy of Richmond County in April because rival gangs were flashing hand signs, the underlying turf battle should be taken seriously, he said.
"It's a billboard," Mr. Harris, the director of Full Circle Refuge youth prison ministry, said of the wall. "It's the newspaper on the street. It's a dog marking their territory. They're saying this is what's out there, this is what we're claiming."
THE FESTERING messages illustrate why gang signs shouldn't be ignored, Mr. Harris said.
He and Richmond County sheriff's investigators urge property owners who find graffiti -- especially with gang undertones -- to report it to police, make sure it's photographed, then clean it off or paint over it as quickly as possible. Keep America Beautiful's Graffiti Hurts program says that to fight vandalism, it should be gone within 48 hours.
The reasoning: so-called graffiti artists get their jollies from having their work seen; to ignore them is to enable them.
"If you leave it up there, it gives the gang credit for what they've done, and it marks their area," sheriff's Sgt. Blaise Dresser said. "If you show that you're afraid of a gang and you leave their graffiti up, they grow."
The Downtown Development Authority takes that approach to vandalism in the city core, much of it done by non-gang "taggers" who paint bubbly, multi-colored, illegible letters and like to leave their initials.
Inside the 30-block Business Improvement District, where property owners pay additional taxes to fund safety and cleanup services from the Clean Augusta Downtown Initiative, or CADI, graffiti on public property is cleaned up within 24 to 48 hours, authority Executive Director Margaret Woodard said.
CADI workers are inventorying damage throughout the district and offering a rate of $50 per 16 square feet to remove it for private property owners. They use a product called Ball Amnesty Graffiti Remover, which comes in aerosol cans.
Cleaning 16 square feet takes about an hour, Ms. Woodard said.
THE WALTON WAY building, a former printing shop, sits in the v-intersection with Heckle Street. One of the first markings, the heart, appeared on the west wall last summer.
Asked why it's never been cleaned, building owner Ziad Ahmadie said the building is under contract to be sold and he's not willing to put any more work into it. He said he had a tenant there, a construction company, that he evicted for not paying the rent.
Told that police recommend quick removal of gang markings, he said that's not his area of expertise. He never filed a police report about the damage, but Sgt. Dresser said the wall has been documented anyway.
"I have no idea about gangs," Dr. Ahmadie said.
The heart with a three-pronged pitchfork in the center is a Folk gang symbol, Mr. Harris said.
"They want to put fear in people, like there's something demonic about it," Mr. Harris said. "But they're not really Satanists or anything."
That symbol was later defaced by someone with black spray paint who X'd out the heart, wrote "Blood" to the left and far off to the right, and sprayed black over the heart's right wing -- "clipping" it as a sign of disrespect, Mr. Harris said.
Then someone crossed out "Blood" and wrote "FOLK LIFE" under it. "HBP" also appeared, which stands for Harrisburg Posse, one of the gangs involved in the high school brawl.
SOMEONE ALSO appears to have started a six-point star, another Folk symbol, but aborted midway. Painted in blue, "2-7-4" corresponds to the alphabetical letters BGD, or Black Gangster Disciples -- a Chicago gang under the Folk alliance.
Mr. Harris said lackadaisical attitudes about gang graffiti have emboldened those responsible. Last week, Folk markings were on the back of a climbing wall near the Academy of Richmond County's tennis courts. Richmond County schools' maintenance and facilities department aims to take down graffiti on school property within 24 hours to stifle bragging, director Benton Starks has said, and a crew painted over it Friday.
"I think somebody is just trying to take control," Mr. Harris said.
Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225 or johnny.edwards@augustachronicle.com.
GRAFFITI ARREST
First there was Gangster Disciples and Thug Mafia graffiti under the Gordon Highway bridge over Laney-Walker Boulevard. Then someone put Bloods gang symbols over it, Richmond County sheriff's Investigator Paul Godden said.
About 10 a.m. May 23, a CSX employee saw a man spraying something on the support columns and summoned police, according to an incident report. A deputy reportedly found Montrell Booker, 18, at an Allen Homes housing project with a can of black spray paint, a blue bandanna and a marijuana cigar on the ground nearby.
Mr. Booker was spraying over the Bloods markings, Investigator Godden said, and he claims membership in the Thug Mafia gang, whose moniker and symbols defaced the municipal building and Signers Monument on Greene Street a day earlier. At his home police found a gang book for "The Thugged Mafia white flagged nation," describing their symbols, dress codes, regulations and ways to attain rank. He claimed to be a captain nicknamed "Heavy," the investigator said.
Mr. Booker was charged with interference to government property and criminal street gang activity.
DON'T JUST LEAVE IT!
If you find graffiti on your property, the worst thing to do is leave it there, experts say. Follow these steps, the "three R's of graffiti":
REPORT: Call the Richmond County Sheriff's Office at (706) 821-1080 and summon a deputy. File an incident report.
RECORD: If the deputy doesn't mention it, remind him/her that an investigator needs to photograph and document the vandalism. If you're not sure it got done, photograph it yourself and save the pictures. They could be useful to police in prosecuting perpetrators or tracking gang activity.
REMOVE: Get rid of the graffiti within 48 hours. It can be painted over, sandblasted off or scrubbed off with graffiti removal products available at hardware stores, such as Goof Off which sells for about $2 to $7 per can.
Then ...
STAY ON IT: If you get hit again, repeat the above steps. Don't let the vandals wear you down -- wear them down. If their work can't be seen because you keep erasing it, they'll go elsewhere.
Sources: Richmond County sheriff's Sgt. Blaise Dresser; Richmond County sheriff's Investigator Paul Godden; Devon Harris, director of Full Circle Refuge; Keep America Beautiful environmental organization
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