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'Sometime Samurai '

BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Straphangers, get ready for your closeup: Officials are planning to put cameras in the subway cars in a new security effort driven by an increase in vandalism.With cameras already proliferating in stations and tunnels amid terrorism fears, electronic eyes also will be placed on trains to help snare graffiti vandals who are increasingly turning to acid to burn their "tags" into subway car windows.

Transit officials announced the camera plan yesterday as they said vandalism is up and offered a profile of the scrawl-happy, self-proclaimed artists.

Most are teenagers who strike after school or during predawn hours. And a look at the 122 suspected subway vandals arrested this year show they are a diverse group, officials said.

"Everyone is involved in this illegal behavior," NYPD Transit Bureau Chief James Hall said - describing an "underworld" where handiwork is sometimes photographed by culprits who then paint-over their "tags" to thwart investigators.

The exact number of cameras - or when they will be deployed - has yet to be determined. But officials say the surveillance will be key to stymieing the growing vandalism problem.

Authorities for decades have battled vandals using markers and spray paint, with some major successes.

But the "new scourge" is vandals working with etching tools and more damaging acid compounds, said Michael Lombardi, TA vice president of subways.

A popular product is Armour Etch, which costs about $8 for a 3-ounce container, Lombardi said. The caustic substance is put into empty shoe-polish bottles for ready use on windows while trains are moving, he said.

"Your risk of being apprehended is low," Hall said. "It's a crime that can be done very quickly."

That's where officials hope cameras can help by providing images for use in investigations.

The 122 subway vandals arrested this year are more than the tally for all of 2005.

But police this year haven't busted anyone for scratching or burning subway windows, although at least one suspect was charged with possessing etching tools, a police spokesman said.

There have been 72 "major hits" to subway trains this year. Each resulted in a train being taken out of service for more than 8 hours of repairs or cleaning, officials said.

That's compared with just 52 major hits in 2004, and 101 last year.

MTA board member Barry Feinstein said the TA has to do more to protect its subway fleet - and ordered brass to look into the costs of increasing staff.

"It seems to me we have to get our arms around this. It's just going to get bigger and worse," he warned.

The TA spends about $11 million annually to deal with graffiti on trains and in stations, officials said.

Transit officials will propose spending another $25 million over three years to replace damaged windows on more than 5,000 subway cars and to outfit the new windows with protective see-through shields.

Such shields, which can be replaced much faster and cheaper than glass windows, are now used on about 1,800 of the TA's newest trains.

Originally published on May 23, 2006

By Chuck Bennett
amNewYork Staff Writer

May 23, 2006

Hidden cameras may be coming to subway cars — not to catch terrorists, but to snag teenage vandals bent on tagging the transit system, officials said Monday.

Graffiti and its nastier cousin, acid-etched or knife-carved "scratchiti," have exploded during the past two years. Now, transit officials want to place closed-circuit digital television cameras in train cars, said Michael Lombardi, a senior vice president of New York City Transit.

"There's a lot of technical solutions out there that sound pretty good," Lombardi said after briefing an MTA board committee.

The TA has a zero-tolerance policy for graffiti. If a train is severly hit it will be taken out of service for cleaning, which can lead to overcrowding on other cars.

NYPD Transit Bureau Chief James Hall said there is an entire "underworld" of graffiti artists and vandals vying to outdo each other, who then brag about it on Web sites. Cops even surf the Web looking for the vandals — but that is not enough.

While it is still too early to put a price tag on the camera project, the TA has already met with several companies that installed cameras in other transit systems around the world.

The possible car camera program would be separate from the $292 million project by defense contractor Lockheed Martin to wire subway platforms with cameras to thwart terrorists.

The TA is already installing cameras at turnstiles to catch fare beaters and watch platforms. There are 2,328 closed-circuit television cameras in 276 subway stations, with more on the way. Eventually all subway stations will be under watchful lens of digital cameras.

Personnel do not monitor the cameras all the time. Instead, images from the cameras are stored for 45 days and are available for download by the police, the TA said.

MTA board members with oversight of the subway appeared to support the camera proposal Monday, but it didn't go over well with the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"It's creepy," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU.

"[It] sounds a whole lot like Big Brother. … There's been a discernable lack of concern for the long-range privacy implications of government capturing ordinary every day activities on videotape and maintaining a record of it."

In addition to the cameras, the TA and police is also fighting graffiti the old-fashioned way. NYPD is offering up to $500 for tips leading to arrests of vandals targeting the subway.

by patrick arden / metro new york

MAY 23, 2006

MIDTOWN — NYC Transit has declared a new war on subway graffiti and “scratchiti,” detailing a crackdown yesterday that included one proposal for installing video cameras on trains.

There’s been an uptick in graffiti on the subway system,” said Michael Lombardi, senior vice president for subways, who noted the agency now spends more than $11 million a year to clean it up.

“And that’s just paint,” he said. “We have at least 90 painters who are working on graffiti.”

The subway’s “new scourge” is acid paste, which is used to etch windows and other surfaces. “Graffiti we can wash off,” Lombardi explained. “An etched glass has to be replaced.”

Lombardi said 1,843 of the system’s 6,200 subway cars now have Mylar sheets on their windows to protect the glass, but these cars are newer models. One plan calls for replacing windows in 5,000 cars with Mylar-covered glass at a cost of $10 million. “After you change the glass and put the Mylar on, it will cost about $5 million to maintain it,” Lombardi said. “Over a three-year period, its total cost is $25 million.”

The number of “major hits,” which take trains out of service for more than eight hours, has doubled over the last two years, from 52 in 2004 to 101 in 2005. This year, major hits have already reached 72, while minor graffiti incidents number 55,852.

“The major hits disrupt service,” Lombardi said. “It is our policy to not run trains in service with graffiti. If we leave it on, it just attracts more graffiti. It makes [vandals] bolder, and it has a psychological impact on passengers, who’ll think that the transit system is out of control.”

Queens and Manhattan are the hot spots, said James Hall, chief of the NYPD’s transit bureau, which keeps a database of 1,200 tags to identify repeat offenders. The bureau has also started to stake out locations, often planting a car on an isolated stretch of track and stationing cops inside.

The use of video cameras would be years away. “There’s a lot of technical solutions out there that sound pretty good, but whether they really work is another thing,” said Lombardi.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, predicted, “New Yorkers will be properly incensed to hear that the MTA would turn our every moment on the subway into a matter of government record.”

Disruptions

The number of “major hits,” which take trains out of service for more than eight hours, has doubled over the last two years, from 52 in 2004 to 101 in 2005.

With $25 Million, M.T.A. Plans a New War on Subway Graffiti

By THOMAS J. LUECK
Published: May 23, 2006
Adopting a drastic measure that recalled battles against subway graffiti from the 1970's and 80's, transit officials yesterday said they planned to spend $25 million to replace the windows in about 5,000 cars that are vulnerable to being indelibly marred by graffiti vandals using knives or etching acid.

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A senior police official, appearing before the committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that oversees the subways, attributed the recent surge in graffiti to competing gangs seeking to deface or "tag" subway cars with their symbols.

"This is an underworld, a segment of society that doesn't see this as a crime," said the official, Chief James P. Hall, the commander of the police transit bureau.

Although most of the vandalism is being committed by New Yorkers, he said, it has taken on a global dimension with vandals from as far away as Europe having been caught putting their tags on subway car exteriors, and photographing their handiwork as a memento of their vacation.

Transit officials described the planned investment in windows as a partial solution. The replacements would resemble windows already in use in the newest of the system's 6,200 subway cars, which are coated with Mylar, a resilient polyester that can be peeled off and replaced when damaged by graffiti, keeping the glass underneath clean.

The protective coating is necessary because, unlike spray paint, scratches and acid-based graffiti are impossible to remove. "The battle is lost" once the windows are damaged, said Michael Lombardi, senior vice president for subways of New York City Transit, a division of the authority.

Some transit officials said the plan did not go far enough, and urged the authority to consider more vigilant steps, like equipping trains with cameras to capture vandals in action.

The chairman of the transit committee, Barry Feinstein, said the authority should hire security guards for each of its depots and storage yards to supplement the work of the police and to keep vandals out.

"This becomes a contest" among vandals, he said. "We need to get our arms around this, and from what I am hearing, we are not."

Mr. Lombardi said $25 million would be included in a proposed 2007 budget that the authority is to consider later this year. If approved, he said, $10 million will be spent to buy and install the new windows and $5 million will be used annually for three years to remove graffiti.

Chief Hall's description of gangs trying to outdo one another in defacing subway cars was reminiscent of the 1970's and 80's, when the subways were coated in painted graffiti, offering a symbol of a city run amok. Although the current surge is not as pervasive, graffiti applied with knives and acid is more destructive.

And, Chief Hall added, policing the problem is just as difficult today as it was in the past. Vandals armed with knives or etching acid can deface a subway window "in under 10 seconds, and make their exit," he said, and those using spray paint often make their mark after midnight, sneaking into tunnels or storage yards.

Mr. Lombardi said he could not provide an estimate as to how much the transit agency was spending to remove scratches or acid-based graffiti from windows. But for now, he said, only windows that are defaced with profanity or racial epithets are replaced, leaving the scratches and acid scrawls.

In some cases, train cars that have been marred by a large amount of graffiti are taken out of service for hours of repairs, leading to service disruptions, Mr. Lombardi said. He said the number of such major graffiti attacks, which require at least eight hours of work in terminals, had nearly doubled last year, to 101, from 52 in 2004. So far this year, there have been 72 similar cases, he said.

While graffiti arrests in the subway system declined last year, to 110, from 149 in 2004, they have surged so far this year to 122, according to police records.

Under a city law that went into effect this year, etching acid, typically used by artists who work in glass, cannot be sold to people under 21. Chief Hall said that in a recent undercover investigation a 17-year-old had not been able to buy the acid at several stores, but that many young vandals arrested for graffiti vandalism had easily bought the acid on the Internet.

New York City Transit officials said they had security guards assigned to several subway depots and yards, but declined to respond yesterday to Mr. Feinstein's proposal about hiring more to protect subways from vandals.

The officials said that the proposal to put cameras in subway cars was already under consideration and that discussions were under way with several companies that manufacture video monitors. But they said it was too early to say how many of the cameras would be used in subway cars, or when.

The transit agency has budgeted $25 million to put cameras in hundreds of buses and at the entrances of about 60 subway stations, but subway trains are not included in that plan.

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