This artistic trend is starting to evolve as hip-hop taggers are joining the street gangs and bringing their skill set into the gang graffiti format. However, with Hispanic-influenced gangs, the graffiti can be more artistic in keeping with the mural background of Mexican culture. Generally gang graffiti includes the use of numbers linked to the alphabet. For instance, gangs will use "4/25" to mean "for life" and "187" to mean "death threat" since 187 is the penal code in California for homicide – another indicator of the influence of American gangs in Canada. Some gangs use symbolic signs along with universal gang terminology. Gang graffiti tends to follow cultural lines in its construction and format. The most common are threats, usually to rival gangs and gang members, but on rare occasions, to police. American gangs are often more focused on marking territories due to the high number of gangs that can exist in a small urban area.įinally, graffiti communicates the messages of the gang, usually in the form of roll calls, threats and declarations. In Canada, the use of gang graffiti for territorial boundaries isn't used to the same extent as it is in American cities, like Los Angeles. Second, graffiti can define territorial movements and areas controlled by gangs. For police, it will corroborate incoming source information. For the general public, graffiti will be the first indicator of a gang's presence. This is when graffiti is at its most frequent and highest density. This is especially important when a new gang is formed, as this will often be used to announce its presence. Gang graffiti has several important purposes.įirst, it communicates the presence of a gang. Reading it is intelligence gathering in its purist form and provides a snapshot of the gang culture in that community at the time it was placed. We can think of gang graffiti as the newspaper of the street. Most graffiti is hip-hop tagger style, with a smaller mix of generic, social, political and gang styles. The breakdown of graffiti in Canada mirrors the rest of the modern world. However, there's another aspect that's sometimes overlooked and often under investigated: the graffiti that accompanies gangs. When police officers think of gangs, their first thoughts are of violence, drugs and disenfranchised youth.
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