Graffiti Contest Marred By Vandals' Visit To Area

Participants did their part in the Great Graffiti Contest on Saturday to re-beautify the London Street underpass. But less than an hour after the event was over, vandals visited the area and defaced the new art work with the same tool that created it.

According to event organizers and police, soon after the annual town-sponsored graffiti party at the cement railroad underpass on London Street, which is organized to discourage illegal graffiti there, someone spray painted over legal graffiti with the illegal kind.

“For someone to come and do this before the sun even set is despicable,” said Executive Director of the East Greenwich Housing Authority Marcia Sullivan, who organizes the annual event. “Hopefully the people who did this will not prevail.”

Sullivan said the event itself, which lasted until about 2 p.m., was a great success. (WATCH A VIDEO OF THE 2010 GREAT GRAFFITI CONTEST).

“We had no problems all day,” she said. “Fifty plus people had a great day here.”

But right after packing up and leaving the site for the day, Sullivan got a call from police saying the concrete underpass had been vandalized.

Sullivan, Cindy Overton, the chairwoman of the EGHA board of directors, and a few other volunteers, returned to apply a third coat of paint to the underpass of the day – this time to cover up the illegal graffiti that covered up the initial legal variety.

Sullivan said she would love to apply yet another coat in the near future. She said she would be interested in having a make-up event to create new art for the underpass. However the Housing Authority, she said, does not have enough money left in its budget to host a second event in the same year.

“I’d be very interested in having a second event,” she said. “It takes some money, but we’d work on it.”

Detectives are working on solving the crime, said East Greenwich Police Chief Tom Coyle.

“We take this very seriously,” Coyle said. “We’re going to see if we can come up with suspects.”