'Crusty Punks', Rail Riders Vandalize Wicker Park

It's no secret that graffiti and vandalism can be a problem in the Bucktown and Wicker Park areas.

The issue is particularly widespread in Wicker Park itself, officials have said, leading to the installation of surveillance cameras and many community discussions. One of those discussions kicks off tonight, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. According to Doug Wood, secretary of the Wicker Park Advisory Council, property damage has been a major issue there for years. And that damage hasn't been limited to graffiti tags.

He recalled a 2009 incident in which a rowdy post-bar crowd knocked over the Charles Wicker sculpture. The recklessness racked up around $16,000 in repair bills, including the cost of an architect who repaired dents and reinstalled the bronze fixture with reinforced legs to prevent future destruction. It was 2011 before the iconic statue was returned to its rightful place in the park.

Wood said that the incident, along with an increasing amount of damage in the park in general, has led neighbors, the park district, and 1st Ward Ald. Proco Joe Moreno to push for surveillance cameras. A camera south of the park's fountain was installed in 2011, and a second, funded by Moreno, was placed at the corner of Damen Avenue and Shiller Street.

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The devices are meant to deter the vandalism, but Wood said it hasn't stopped. He said the majority of the park's graffiti is found in areas directly in front of the cameras, and that hasn't even been the worst of it.

"I have a photograph of the bench right underneath the camera, and it had a huge pile of human excrement on it one morning," Wood said.

Plants in the park's community-created gardens are also trampled or otherwise damaged fairly frequently. Wood attributed some of the destruction to a group of transient people and rail riders who call themselves "crusty punks."

They tend to move into the park during the warm spring and summer months, he said. He also credits crowds of bar patrons, who have trashed the park by holding impromptu late-night soirees.

"There's hundreds of beer cans every Friday morning, Saturday morning and Sunday morning from the after-bar traffic," Wood said.

Graffiti on the park's historic fountain is particularly costly to remove because it has to be done by a historical restoration specialist. Marks on concrete surfaces have to be sand blasted away by park district staff, while tags on the benches are cleaned up by volunteers from the Wicker Park Garden Club.

"When we garden, we clean graffiti for four or five hours," Wood said. "And (there were) 80 hits of graffiti this (past) summer; we had to do it 80 times. And it's a real pain, when you're there to garden, and you end up cleaning graffiti 80 times."

Wood has had little success catching perpetrators in the act. The security cameras are run through the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, and privacy laws prevent a private citizen from seeing the footage at will.

A detailed police report with photos of the damage and specific dates and times must be filed in order for the footage to be reviewed, but since the damage is to park property, Wood can't file those reports himself. They must be submitted by the park district.

To prevent future damage this year, Wood has gotten approval for the advisory council to hire park district security guards who will monitor the park overnight for a month at the beginning of the summer. He hopes people will learn quickly that the park is off limits at night.

"We need to have overnight security to set the precedent to all the imported people—like the rail riders and crusty punks—and the after-bar people that no, it's not a place to go and trash," Wood said.

His main concern regarding the vandalism is that much of what's being damaged was created, donated or funded by members of the community. Neighbors also help support much of the park's programming, such as movie nights and classes. He fears that if the damage goes unchecked, community members could lose heart and stop supporting the park, which could cause it to deteriorate even more.

"The only reason we have benches and the urns and gardens and dog parks is because the neighbors pay for it," he said. "If the neighbors see everything destroyed, then they won't fund things anymore, so that is our concern in trying to stop all this."

Wood's security proposal, as well as questions of funding, logistics and planning for most of the park's programming for 2013, will be discussed at an advisory council planning meeting tonight, Jan. 15. It will be held at the Wicker Park Field House and is set to start at 7 p.m. It's open to the public.