'It looks like garbage town:' Graffiti vandals targeting Seattle downtown businesses

SEATTLE — Graffiti vandals are at work in the city of Seattle and police said the crime has gotten worse through the COVID-19 crisis.

Business owners and neighbors have had enough.

You can’t go far in the Emerald City without seeing graffiti on storefronts, buildings and even car was recently tagged near the Denny Triangle.

“It’s just everywhere and it looks like garbage town,” said Todd Biesold who is the CEO of Merlino Foods.

It’s a problem he adds he’s been fighting around his SODO warehouse for years

“I have been tagged so many times I can’t even count them - it’s every week,” he said.

COVID has sidelined local abatement programs and Seattle Police no longer have officers assigned to the graffiti beat.

Detective Christopher Young led the effort from 2011 to 2017 before it was discontinued in 2020.

He said graffiti vandalism is symptomatic of other problems.

“Nowhere is really safe right now,” Young said.

That’s because so many downtown storefronts are empty and many employees remain working from home.

“A building that’s not being used and boarded up - they are (taggers) going to do their art there because it will be there longer to look at,” said Young.

The Downtown Seattle Association’s Clean Team spent the morning Tuesday painting over graffiti in an alley between 3rd and 4th Avenue off Pine Street.

Young said covering the graffiti immediately is the biggest deterrent.

“The number of graffiti tags has risen over the last year not only in downtown but throughout the city,” said James Sido, the director of media relations at the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA)

He said DSA has cleaned more than 360 tags off 28 private properties – just downtown alone - since the start of 2021. And that's just the property owners that have asked for help.

Biesold said more needs to be done than just cleaning up what graffiti vandals have left behind.

“I think we need to get to the root of the problem and why it’s happening in the first place,” Biesold said.

All to solve a problem that’s taking the sparkle out of Seattle.

“I think it will get a lot better once things get back to normal,” Young said.