Nicole Radzievich | Of The Morning Call
On a wall used for handball most summer days, the words ''Principal,'' ''Rubio'' and other indecipherable gang tags were scrawled weeks -- maybe months -- ago at Yosko Park.
But within minutes Monday, Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan, Councilman Robert Donchez and other city leaders blasted the graffiti off the wall, using a power washer that packs a punch of 3,500 pounds per square inch with a special solution or water up to 200 degrees.
Call it a ''Graffiti Buster.''
''If we don't stay on top of this, it will just spread,'' said Donchez, public safety chairman. ''We need to remove it as soon as it appears.''
Bethlehem used $13,000 of a $100,000 anti-gang grant to buy the heated power washer to remove graffiti from city parks, businesses and residences. While graffiti can be found all over the city, Yosko Park was picked as a demonstration site for the media because it had been targeted for anti-gang programs.
While some graffiti is the result of juvenile boredom, other tags -- dubbed ''the newspaper of the streets'' -- can denote the territory of a certain gang. It's an advertisement for street gangs, sometimes creating fear in the neighborhood. Police are following a well-established policy in the law enforcement community to report the graffiti, record it and remove it.
Callahan emphasized the importance of people reporting graffiti using the police nonemergency line, 610-865-7187.
''The residents are the eyes and ears of this community,'' Callahan said. ''We need their help to make this work.''
Police are compiling a list of dozens of locations where graffiti has been reported.
The power washer was paid for through the $2.5 million Route 222 Corridor Anti-Gang Initiative, developed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan to unite local, state and federal officials, community groups and faith-based organizations in fighting the proliferation of gangs in four counties: Northampton, Lehigh, Berks and Lancaster.
Two weeks ago, Easton held a demonstration of its graffiti remover. Allentown has had a power washer for years.
While officials say the gang problem isn't as prevalent in Bethlehem as other places in the Lehigh Valley, Callahan said gangs know no municipal boundaries and the city has some gangs. Among them are homegrown gangs, namely the Pembroke Crew and The Five Points Crew. Authorities call these gangs the breeding ground for national gangs.
Bethlehem also is awarding minigrants of between $500 and $2,500 to community groups for gang prevention. Authorities aren't so concerned about what the activity is as much as what it does: fills in the gaps in a young person's life.
Those most vulnerable to crimes have certain risk factors, and the activity proposed must address one or more of those risk factors, officials said. The risk factors can include living in crime-ridden neighborhoods, having a parent in prison or not doing well in school. The city will pick the recipients by September.
