KELSEYVILLE ? When business partners Kathy McGuire and Anita McKee arrived Monday morning for work at a Broadmoor Way real estate building in the Clear Lake Rivieras area, they were shocked and dismayed to find graffiti sprawled across the outside wall facing Soda Bay Road.
“We”re all women here, and we really don”t feel safe anymore. If they will do something like this to your business, are they going to be waiting for you when you walk out at night?” Lakeview Homes and Estates co-owner McGuire said.
While this was the first time her business has been “tagged,” the incident was not isolated, according to McKee. She called the building across Broadmoor Way from her building “one of the worst slums you ever saw.” The building, within sight of homes in the Clear Lake Riviera Home Owners Association, bears spray-painted messages on all sides, cracked windows and a makeshift bed along the wall facing away from Soda Bay Road.
“The symbols and letters in this case are those typical of the Norte?o gang, a group that is more prominent in the Ukiah area than it is here, but one we”re starting to see more of,” Captain James Bauman, public information officer from the Lake County Sheriff”s Office said.
Bauman said “tagging” ? a method gangs use to mark territory ? was not typical in the Kelseyville Rivieras area.
He said tagging had picked up during the last four months in Lower Lake and Clearlake, but had previously been sporadic.
In that time frame, Bauman said the department has seen an average of 12 to 15 incidents of gang-related vandalism.
Detective Norm Taylor of the Lakeport Police Department, a member of Lake County”s gang task force, reported last year that the rival Norte?os and Sure?os are two prominent street gangs in Lake County.
According to Taylor, the Sure?os associate with the color blue, the number 13, the word “sur” written in graffiti and Southern California sports teams known for the color blue, such as the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Norte?os associate with the color red, the number 14, the word “norte” written in graffiti and Northern California sports teams known for the color red, such as the San Francisco 49ers.
Taylor said the gangs are turf-driven, and called graffiti “a precursor to violence.”
He said when one rival gang”s graffiti is crossed out by a rival, that signals a territory takeover.
McGuire said she was advised by an LCSO deputy to paint over the spray-painted message as soon as possible, and to install a security camera. She said the latter was too costly of a proposition.
“Public safety in any area of the county is best preserved by always reporting suspicious activity and never presuming that nothing can be done about a problem in the community,” Bauman said.
McKee said she plans to bring up the issues of graffiti in the community and forming a neighborhood watch at the next homeowner”s association meeting.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
