Introduction
Anti-social behaviour and criminal damage are frequently dismissed as low-level offences, yet their true impact on vulnerable individuals can be devastating. Our Practitioner and Policy Manager, Mark, details a case study below from his time as a Response Officer in Essex where a compassionate, victim-centred approach to a single incident of graffiti evolved into a large-scale operation to address graffiti.
Initial report and victim impact
I was a response officer in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex at the time and I was allocated a case of criminal damage where a large amount of graffiti was sprayed onto an elderly victim’s house. This took place in a conservation area of the town and was extremely distressing to the victim who had only recently been widowed.
One of the main difficulties in dealing with graffiti is the rapid nature of the offence action and it is often committed very late at night when potential witnesses or passing Police patrols are at their lowest numbers.
I visited the man and spent some time with him, tea, toasted teacakes and sympathy – talking through the impact which was significant as was the cost of repair, running into hundreds of pounds in redecoration which the victim could not easily afford.
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Investigative challenges and identifying the ‘tags’
Particular tags (specific designs often attributed to individual people carrying out the graffiti) were sprayed on the house. These featured the words ‘MADDO’ and ‘FIB’.
The main problem I faced was “How on earth am I going to identify offenders from this?” As I walked around the area immediately next to the damaged house, I began to notice similar graffiti and tags on walls, pavements and other publicly owned buildings.
Multi-agency collaboration
As in all probability, the offenders were of school age, I decided to get in touch with school’s Liaison Officers for the area of Leigh and Southend, figuring they would probably not be travelling vast distances to do this type of crime.
This proved pivotal.
In a short while after I had spoken with them, a colleague phoned me at home and explained he may have something for me. He had visited the schools in his patch with pictures I had obtained of the damaged house. On chatting to a teacher, they recognised the tags and gave my colleague a name of a potential suspect. With permission of the head teacher, this person’s locker was opened and inside was found a large number of designs of dubs (large and often complex pieces of sprayed graffiti work and tag designs) which featured the word FIB and variations of this word.
At another school, there were similar results and soon I had gathered ten names all of young males (aging from 13-16 years of age) forming a gang calling themselves NBK or the Natural Born Killers.
Escalation of offences
As I continued gathering evidence by driving round the division identifying the various gang members tags, other offences were being committed, including shop theft of spray cans, art sets and items such as dark clothing which was all to be used by the gang members. There were also some burglaries committed where cash had been stolen as well as other items.
I organised arrest and search teams of the ten suspects and this yielded compelling evidence of their involvement in a massive amount of criminal damage across the entire division which had by now been so prevalent, it had been mentioned in the house of commons by the then Tory MP for the area, Sir David Amess (now sadly deceased, having been stabbed to death in Leigh-on-Sea some years ago).
Evidence gathering and systemic cataloguing
In one gang member’s house (FIB tag) we found a very large design of the tag covering the entire wall of his bedroom.
We also recovered stolen items and items used to spray walls as well as a large number of photographs taken by the gang after they had completed their “work”.
In order to catalogue the offences, I organised drive by detections, which were accompanied by a solicitor, an appropriate adult, the suspect and a colleague, we would drive around and identify damages to property both public and private sector. I also organised photographs of each identified damage by scenes of crime officers.
This was a massive undertaking and involved many hours of work to obtain and catalogue damages and other offences and interview each suspect.
All ten made admissions to their activity.
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Outcomes
Charges were formulated and served for the offences of criminal damage, theft (from store) and burglary.
All were subsequently found guilty and received fines and suspended sentences mainly due to their ages. They were subsequently ordered to assist the council to help repair some of the damage they had caused.
In all, the operation detected nearly 800 offences of criminal damage, valued at just under a third of a million pounds to repair, theft amounting to hundreds of pounds of goods and burglary and is still one of the largest operations in terms of detections, of its kind in the U.K.
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Preventative interventions and best practice
As a way of trying to provide those that wished to express themselves by using graffiti, I suggested a commissioned build for a cube design which had a number of large surfaces to incorporate designs which could then be photographed and then `wiped` (painted over) and replaced with more work. This gave a space for young people to carry out the activity legally rather than face criminal action.
I then produced a best practice guide for Police as a way of assisting them should they face similar problems in the future.
Conclusion
This case study illustrates that what begins as localised anti-social behaviour can quickly escalate into widespread, high-value criminal activity if left unchecked. By combining initial victim empathy with proactive investigative work and partnership working, the police were able to dismantle an active criminal gang. Furthermore, the operation highlights that a truly effective response to youth crime goes beyond enforcement measures; it requires restorative justice and creative outlets to prevent future reoffending.