[media-credit name=’Derek Montgomery’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]In a city that is devoting years of construction and redesign to the campus and downtown area, graffiti continues to be an ongoing problem.

There has been a noticeable increase in the last few years of taggings in Madison, according to Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4. He said that a number of the tags include a few high profile cases on the Capitol and more recently, some on the brand new State Street bus shelters.

Verveer added that, although many people believe graffiti is a victimless crime and not a big deal, serious consequences accompany the act.

“[Graffiti] is extremely costly to remove, and the city taxpayers and private property owners end up paying for it,” he said.

The links between graffiti and gang violence are also a public concern in Madison. Verveer said he knows of a past case where a woman living downtown left the area because she was afraid of graffiti and its possible relationship to gang activity.

Although some of the graffiti in the downtown area is just done as art, much of it has been linked to gang activity, according to Emily Samson, Madison Police Department Public Informations Officer.

“Many of these known gangs such as SSL [south side local] or the Mexican Syndicates will tag their names, signs or symbols, which can make it easy to identify them,” Samson said.

But catching these criminals can be “tricky” and “sneaky,” according to Samson, because tracking the crimes is difficult.

Alan Fish, UW Vice Chancellor of Facilities, Planning and Management, said there seems to be less graffiti today than in past years. Fish added there is work being done to clean up the city when taggings appears on UW property.

“UW tries to clean and remove the graffiti as soon as possible,” Fish said. “If you leave it up, it invites more. A clean wall protects a tagged one.”

Samson said she has not heard of a reported influx of citywide graffiti, but added that this type of activity is not strictly isolated to Madison. Samson noted it has become an increasing problem over the past 10 years outside of the city.

Faramarz Vakali, associate director of the Physical Plant, said the graffiti problem in Madison does not appear to be an overwhelming one. Instead, it is an ongoing problem rather than an increasing one.

Many students do not seem to be particularly affected or upset by incidents of graffiti.

“I have never really thought of graffiti to be a big problem at this school,” UW sophomore Jena Belinkie said. “It might simply be that I am not looking for it, but I have just never really noticed it.”