Racist Graffiti
Below are the actions taken following a spate of racist graffiti. It is so offensive that we will not publish photo’s here.
Your Lib Dem councillors are appalled by this action.
Over the last 2 days, there has been a rash of racist graffiti applied to a variety of surfaces, predominantly brickwork but also painted surfaces, footways and road ways. The slogan “Jihad is the only solution for Israel” seems to have been applied using a stencil. This means that the graffiti can be applied quickly and discretely.So far, the majority of locations have been in the Walthamstow area.
Over the course of Thursday 14th May, crews dealt with this graffiti at approximately 18 locations, in addition to dealing with other graffiti work. Unfortunately, we were not able to mobilise overtime resources at short notice and because removing graffiti is a specialist activity.
We are starting this morning with a list of 20 sites, some of which involve multiple items. We will have 2 Jet wash crews working in the Walthamstow area. We expect to receive and pass additional sitings to the crews over the course of the day.
This evening we expect to have at least 2 crews working overtime, in combination, catching up with normal day to day graffiti and with any racist graffiti which comes in today that is not dealt with in normal time. We also expect to field at least one crew over the weekend.
Through Gareth Jones and Sian Hasler, there have been discussions both with TJAG and the Police. We have asked that this be a particular area for attention across all shifts.
We do not know when this graffiti is being applied or whether one or more people are involved. However, if those involved are to be caught it may be that we can draw them back into re-graffiting the same sites, particularly if we can try and contain the activity to the Walthamstow area.
In order for us to respond as quickly and efficiently as possible, we need assistance from those reporting and those handling reports. We need precise locations. If we also know in advance what surface the graffiti is on, we can determine whether it requires a specialist jet wash crew to respond or whether we can deploy other resources to paint over. We also need the reports to get to us as quickly and directly as possible.
Members of the public should raise these items as service requests. Councillors are also recommended to raise as service requests, because our method of operation has been set up, and recently refined, to deal with service requests as quickly as possible. For internal purposes or outside normal hours, the following phone numbers apply:
7:00 - 5:00 Monday to Friday Street Cleaning Office 020 8496 2588/2593
Outside normal hours; Andy Lyon, Operations Manager 07896 509 291
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