Downtown Cd'A homes vandalized by graffiti
<p>Coeur d'Alene report taker Candy Rohrscheib talks to Suzanne Marshall on Wednesday about graffiti vandalism reading "Street 57 King" on the garage door of Marshall's 16th Street home.</p>
COEUR d’ALENE — Suzanne Marshall woke up Wednesday morning to find the words “Street 57 King” spray-painted on her garage door. As she walked down the alley behind her 16th Street home, she noticed two of her neighbors also had property tagged with graffiti.
“If it was a real gang that did it, that would be unnerving,” Marshall said. “But it’s just annoying. I don’t feel like cleaning it and I don’t want to clean it then come back to find they did it again.”
Marshall moved to Coeur d’Alene about six months ago. She was surprised to see her garage had been vandalized with graffiti and is upset about having to fix it.
When she called the police to report the vandalism, she was told she had 48 hours to clean it up. Any time she has tried to paint over vinyl, the material her garage door is made of, the paint just peeled right off. She also doesn’t want to do more damage to her new garage by scraping the paint off.
She called Ace Hardware for advice as to how to best handle her newest art piece. She said the manager told her the Ace Hardware building was tagged within the past few days as well.
Candy Rohrscheib, a report-taker for the Coeur d’Alene police department, said they see more graffiti around town when the weather improves.
“It really ramps up in the summer and garages make great canvases,” she said.
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GRAFFITI
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She said the police department tends to assume the vandals are teenagers, but it doesn't rule out older generations. The department will send the evidence to school resource officers to see if they recognize anything.
“If we are going to catch them it’s because they do it again on lockers or in a notebook at school,” Rohrscheib said. “It’s a senseless act and can be expensive to fix.”
Coeur d’Alene Detective Jared Reneau said his department catches the people responsible for graffiti when students report what they know to school resource officers or when a pattern arises and police investigators can link certain graffiti to specific kids.
He said those responsible for graffiti tend to be teenage boys.
When asked by The Press about gang presence in Coeur d’Alene, Reneau said from time to time his department does see some gang influences in town.
“Graffiti is a problem but not a bad problem,” he said. “We see it regularly but not a lot of it.”