From the city’s lawsuit against the man police say is the NOMAS tagger
“LABRAT”
Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison says her office has filed civil lawsuits against “three prolific taggers responsible for thousands of dollars in damage to private and public property in Seattle.”
The suits are the first under legislation from the city attorney’s office passed by the Seattle City Council this summer opening the way for Davison to pursue civil damages for “criminal graffiti.”
Davison says the ordinance could hit the defendants with a “civil penalty of up to $1,500 per graffiti violation.”
In the lawsuit complaints provided to CHS, the city claims taggers “ALURE,” “LABRAT,” and “NOMAS” were “identified by Seattle Police and are known to be extremely prolific, vandalizing property throughout Seattle.”
Named in the three lawsuits are Zorica Klaich, who Davison’s office says was arrested in June 2024 for criminal trespass where “a fresh ‘ALURES’ tag was observed at the scene,” Robert Holl, an alleged tagger the city says was arrested in 2021 after he was “caught spray painting ‘LABRAT’ on a sign,” and alleged “NOMAS” tagger Eduin Miramotes. Davison’s filing says Miramontes “was named in an injunction action by the City of Los Angeles for his graffiti tagging” —
The separate filings include an overview of the financial damage the city claims graffiti and tagging does in Seattle, details of how each alleged tagger was identified, and an accounting of documented illegal graffiti using the targeted tag provided by Seattle Police investigations.
Photos included in the lawsuits show tags on freeway walls, signs, industrial buildings, and transit structures,
The new legal thrust comes as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s crackdown on graffiti has continued as an issue that was important to the longtime city official even in his days on the city council. Last year, the county touted its pursuit of multiple felony cases against some of the area’s most prolific taggers.
Meanwhile, Harrell and Davison are playing catch up in the run-up to the November election.
The lawsuits do not include total fine amounts sought against each defendant but the City Attorney’s office says its requested legal relief will include an “awards judgment to the City for civil penalties per each illegal graffiti violation,” and restitution for “costs incurred by the City or private property owner for removing each of the illegal graffiti.”
“ALURE”
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Do these losers even have that kind of money? Personally I’d rather see them do some time in jail.
Yeah, Harrell and the councilmembers that tried to change the ethics code to favor their corrupt interests should do some time in jail…good suggestion
Right??? lol Harrell is 100x worse for society than these guys
Yeah because Bruce Harrell and his amazon buddies should have it instead? Free the artists!!!
They are not “artists.” They ARE criminal vandals.
They ARE artists. It’s stupid to care about spray paint. We have people who need to be sheltered. Priorities being property ownership over people is whack.
Maybe you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, but most people (and city government) can.
Let’s combine your ideas and spray paint the homeless instead. Bright colors, so I can see them coming.
I’m with you on that one they need to be taught a lesson jail is where they should be. And when they get out they should have to work for the city to clean up all their crap that they put all over the city.
Is it cool if they come do some art on your car? on your front door?
For all the edgelords who think this is fine, do you not realize that the money the city uses to clean up graffiti could be used to help working people?
The city should not be “cleaning” grafitti. It should be ignoring it.
Put these scumbags in prison.
Noooo…lol…Keep them busy!
If you are in prison? You are slave labor. That’s the law. Ask the MAGA. They get slave labor(blacks mostly) in a red taker state.
Also? Prisons are huge money makers. Pay taxes. Town has better roads than it deserves. Better water and sewer. Better schools. Better police dept. and so on.
And lastly?
Those prisoners reside as US citizens in those prisons for life in some cases. They do not get to vote. But are CRITICAL to keeping red state power.
The US Census. They count as House of Representative constituents.
In short…
Black folks are slave labor w/o a vote and create a political environment from which there’s no escape. It’s anti-Democratic. It’s diabolical. It’s America.
And yet? Red states STILL can’t balance a budget on their own revenue. Blue states are makers and red states are takers.
We need to put these people to work cleaning up their mess. Work release. Ankle monitors for a full two years. Those are expensive. That way they can’t roam in the night anymore searching for a spot to destroy.
I was about to say you are unhinged with your rant on black people, prison industry, red state, lol…
But your last paragraph saved it, I am in 100% agreement. They should be forced to clean them up.
My sarcasm is a little tough to separate from crazy…lol
Not a felony. Spector disappoint
I love their art and there’s no way they will win this case against them
writing your name all over everything isn’t art… it’s pissing
Hi Derek!!
Throw the book at these losers.
They rule and it’s not a felony so…
LABRAT is down! Keep ’em safe!!!
What an absolute waste of city resources, as per usual with Harrell. HOUSE THE HOMELESS YOU ASSHOLE. No one cares about graffiti, except the exact type of people you’d expect to–losers.
Actually, we do care about graffiti! No place for homelessness, hunger, lack of healthcare or education or grafftiti in a civil society… perhaps if we had housing, food, healthcare and an education then we’d have a lot less graffiti.. but until then, those who dirty our streets need to be held accountable. I say no jail time, but fines that can only be paid off by painting the walls they defaced, all of them!
This is absolutely untrue. Try even looking for “ancient Roman graffiti” it’s absolutely hilarious.
30,000 year old cave hands made with red clay and pigment.
One of the most relatable and long lasting traditions in all humanity is to simply say.
I WAS HERE.
ya moron.
You don’t get what disrespect for yourself and others is so why should I listen to anything you say as serious?
it’s not the “art” critics. It’s the “art” is on other peoples stuff. We all pay taxes.
Go do whatever you want to your stuff and leave everyone else’s stuff alone.
THAT IS THE ISSUE. NO RESPECT!
Until all advertisements are gone, I’d rather see graffiti every day on every surface. Better than gawking at the BS all the ad-sales brain trusts come up with to convince us that our financial captors are somehow benevolent leaders of society. Give me a LABRAT, ALURE, or NOMAS tag any day over that crap. Hope we see more
Word. There’s a lot of “I don’t know anything about art but, I know what I’m supposed to like” here.
That’s not it…It’s the damaging of others property. Namely our property we pay taxes for. Namely the property I live on. Work on.
Go paint whatever you want. Just do it on YOUR canvas.
That’s ignorant.
“Until all advertisements are gone”
How about YOU do something and ask to have them removed instead of vandalizing everything?
Your mama didn’t teach you to not touch things that do not belong to you?
Hey, I didn’t consent to graffiti OR advertising in my public spaces, so I’m not gonna discriminate…either both or neither. And tbh, the ad execs are far more detrimental to our society. But I get not wanting personal property painted, there are always strays, and I assume it’s younger folks.
Actually? It’s adults that do the most damage. They are lifers. I see it now and then out my window…The kids are generally skate boarders and just right their name and 5 seconds later is gone. It’s the big kids who have some kinda street cred status. They got the money and time. It’s their self worth that’s wrapped around it all. The adults will bully the kids if they tag over them. There’s an arcane set of rules. The idiots code I think it’s called.
The gray blank walls are dirtier than graffiti
wow okay…Y’all will justify anything in the name of destroying shit that’s not yours. Or at least? Condoning it and supporting it. It’s simple common courtesy.
Not destruction. I’m concerned about the destruction of our social norms FAR MORE at the hands of the liberals and fascists right now. Graffiti will dramatically decrease when we give people more to do and more to look forward to in life. But even then, it’ll happen and it’s just not that big a deal. Harrell wastes so much of our tax money and advocates against collecting more, but you’re mad at the taggers? I don’t get it…again unless your PERSONAL property was defaced…in which case yeah, you have a case there.
You should watch the 1982 doc. Wild Style (on youtube!) very interesting view of the modern roots of the subculture.
You are saying “this is more important” and about “money” that’s wasted by Bruce(true btw, he is good at wasting it).
The thing is we can do it all. We HAVE the money. It’s a matter of raising the revenue w/o the little guy paying a dime.
OH! My bad — doc is called Style Wars! Wild Style is a feature film lol, but still very cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DXD1HBaLX0
OH! LOLOL! Duly noted
I saw a documentary on the British and how they went about it. I’ll check this out and give you a review.
After skimming the documentary…
(I will watch the whole thing. I was getting a gist of what you wanted to discuss is all.)
@56:40 they are discussing the exact same thing. The tagger said exactly what you just said to me about wasting time and money trying to catch them when all the other crime is out there is much worse?
True..>Murder is worse, Arson, drunk driving etc.
But it IS a crime. Take that much responsibility in your argument. The attitude that it’s a scoff law? THAT is the problem. Also? We can go after everyone. Little crime, medium crime, big crime and crime on dialed up to 11. (TY Spinal Tap).
It is highly destructive. Who cares if it is “beautiful” or even considered “art”, or not. It is someone else’s stuff. Someone else has to get rid of it if they are not art fans or your art. Someone will come along and tag again and again saying it’s no big deal. That somehow the taggers are the victims. Being persecuted worse than murderers.
The whole line of crap. It’s all crap and centers around disrespect. Around taking zero responsibility for your actions and worse. Making empty excuses so you can continue as a sociopath and destroy stuff.
You know the money wasted on graffiti removal? They boost the supplies usually. They don’t pay for the paint. Or anything.
Whatever. It’s not a virtue.
what a shame. free them
Kodak Alure Woman appears to be all the same tagger. Bummer that this individual ruined a nice artist sunset mural on every column under i-5 on James Street and several Koi columns on Jackson Street in the CID. That’s your public art tax money he’s taking with each tag. Each was defaced with the 2-second Kodak scrawl as well as dozens of minority-owned storefronts throughout the CID and Little Saigon in the last years. Send photos to the City and add to the attribution. Prison seems silly. More fitting restorative justice would be 8-hour days repairing every known surface, especially the difficult surfaces of brick and stone that must be carefully cleaned with chemicals and small wire brushes.
Took the light rail back from the airport rhe other day and so many beautiful murals and artworks on the buildings. But so often, at human level, the daggers had defaced them. Need to distinguish between muralists and taggers.
yeah IKR?
It’s really cool.
Graffiti tags (not street mural art) is blight and I’m sick of these locals that think it’s ok. Maybe you can lend your front door as a canvas!
Graffiti on like a bank building is really a concern? Really?
@Derek, care to offer your address and see how you like getting the graffiti we install off of your laptop, car, bike and whatever else you own? As long as you can accept that your personal belongings will be tagged not once but weekly, then I can take your callous thoughts as informed; otherwise, you don’t have standing. Few buildings are banks or corporate behemoths; most are owned by people struggling to pay the taxes that have tripled in the last 10 years. So you don’t own a building and have never spent the weekend removing graffiti, good for you. This whole issue is about consent. Ask me first and I might let you put a mural on a wall. Scrawl a tag with an acid pen on a window I just installed last week after a bullet hole repair, and it makes me upset that I have to work another week to save for another $1,200 repair. That’s my life and my time that these unkind people are taking from me. That’s Labrat. He did that.
You are not a bank. Landlords should not exist. Bullet holes and graffiti are not even close to in the same category. Nobody does graffiti on laptops or bikes, I’d be hard pressed to find an example on a car without a personal conflict
You asked if Derek owned a building…to be clear, are you a landlord?
A laptop car bike whatever is personal property, a building you own to rent to people is private property. The difference is important because your analogy doesn’t quite work if you’re referring to your private property being tagged. Public property can also be tagged for the record! If this feels like semantics in light of bigger issues, maybe you should stop arguing about graffiti on buildings when we can’t even house people in our buildings cause of jackasses who live off renters’ supplemental income at an ever increasing clip.
Yes…because people think everyone’s stuff is theirs to pass judgement on. Theirs to do as they wish w/o having to own up to those facts.
Seattle, especially along I5, literally looks like garbage these days.
I just came back from San Francisco and was shocked how much better San Francisco looked.
We have very LOW standards in this city… and we should be ashamed that we can’t even agree that tagging and vandalism are a huge problem.
SF is sterile dog water now ruined by technofascists. I love that we are better and different.
really? We vandalize our own shit is better? Different? Naw…It’s the same everywhere. It’s ignorant.
Oh yeah looking at all the single occupant vehicles clogging our roadways and lungs surrounded by monochrome painted concrete is way preferable. You’re a literal psycho the graffiti is the ONLY good thing about I5. I’m sorry you’ve become this person
why the “waddabout” in every rebuttal? It has zero to do with the subject. Nothing. Yet you feel it is needed to round out the argument? Or bury yourself in front of everyone by saying it?
It is not art, it’s filth just like the taggers themselves. They deserve jail time and then some.
You are thinking of the politicians and the banks and landlords who run them
I know what I said.
I hope this means there’ll be “no mas” graffiti. (See what I did there?)
These individuals need to have a much stronger sentence than just civil charges. There needs to be significant criminal charge and fines that completely bankrupt the individuals. Graffiti is a sign of poor social contract, it defaces our beautiful city. All those here calling this good or art are disgraceful citizens and the reason “Seattle is dying”. I am very happy with Davidson and Harrell approach.
The social contract isn’t this unilaterally defined thing by people like you, and the fact that the United States incarcerates more in total and per capita than any other place, while still eating more per capita crime than any peer state, shows what nonsense hogwash it is especially as you conceptualize it.
Cause the way that you conceptualize it requires imprisonment for failure to meet it, always, for everything.
Hey, don’t be overly critical. They will vanish you off the streets!
if people need to make the walls talk then it’s a sign the social contract isn’t being honored by those with power. corporations need to pay their taxes, businesses operating on stolen land need to pay the people they stole it from (or from whom it was stolen on their behalf). Personal belongings/property are not the same thing as “private property” (especially on stolen land).
Graffiti is ugly, unsightly, disgusting and it stinks! Here are a couple of wild ideas to combat graffiti:
I welcome your feedback.
As an aficionado and collector, I must say that LABRAT might be better than Matisse, Van Gogh, I would venture to say, any other contemporary American artist. Bravo.
I am establishing a Go Fund Me account so that I can acquire all the Highway overpass signs, freeway on ramps sidewalls, and dumpsters so that we can celebrate this gifted artist.
Please give what you can.
More election season window dressing from Davison, who is badly losing, undoubtedly in concert with Harrell’s office and Nelson’s office. Better hurry up and do something before November!