Almost everything I blog about lately comes to me from Metafilter, and this is no exception. Jenny will have far more to say about this than I, but apparently there's a company in San Diego (Escondido?) that has created a "graffiti alarm," designed to identify and respond to the sound of an aerosol can. Cleverly enough, it's called Taggertrap. How sad do both of these people sound?
"I really don't like graffiti, and I liked the idea of assisting law enforcement," said George Lerg, the company's president.San Diego Police Officer Sonya Ollison, who works on the department's graffiti detail, said, "This is definitely going to be a beneficial tool."
Wow. Super. According to Ollison, who ought to know, I suppose, "graffiti causes about $8 billion in damage a year." I'm sorry, Jenny, I know that my first reaction to this should be to interrogate the assumption that graffiti = damage, but 8 billion dollars?!?! The amazing thing to me is that this has to be calculated not in terms of actual property damage (which I would guess is minimal) but rather in terms of "abatement" and "removal." In other words, it's probably the assumption itself that graffiti is damage that is costing us 8 billion dollars, yes?
