The tagger struck.

The Victim: Kathie Taub and area homeowners
The Crime: Criminal mischief
Date: Thursday, Dec. 22
Time: 10:30 a.m.
Location: 11900 block of Tavel

The markings, some sort of Eastern letters, were certainly out of place. The colorful top-to-bottom scripted graffiti was now visible in two areas of Kathie Taub’s 12000 Preston Road Homeowners Association neighborhood near Preston and Willow. She knew it was time to call police.

Taub first noticed the graffiti on a traffic light box near her neighborhood. A few weeks later, the scrawl appeared again on a brick wall that stretches the boundaries of the entire neighborhood.

Police told her that was no gang activity in her area, and there was not much they could do as far as tracking down the person responsible.

“There’s really no crime in our area, and it was just unusual for our neighborhood. It’s definitely not good to have that up in your neighborhood,” she says of the graffiti.

Taub says she was worried that if the “taggings” were left up, more would follow. With that in mind, she planned to call the police after the holidays to inquire about removing the graffiti from the traffic light box, and planned on removing the graffiti from the neighborhood wall herself.

Dallas Police Lt. Richard Dwyer of the North Central Patrol Division visited the area several days later, but believes it had been removed already.

“Without seeing it, I really can’t comment on whether it was ‘tagging’ or ‘gang’ markings,” he says.

Dwyer notes that graffiti can be removed as part of the department’s Graffitti Wipeout Program. For more information on the program, visit dallaspolice.net and access the “crime information” section.


Crime numbers

01.12

Date when someone broke into Campisi’s on Lovers Lane through the back door but stole nothing

$25

Amount of cash stolen from a man at knifepoint in the parking lot of his apartment at Midway and LBJ Freeway

5:30 a.m.

About the time on New Year’s Day when someone set a woman’s car on fire using fireworks near Northwest Highway and Marsh

Source: Dallas Police Department