Graffiti ‘not gang related’

A recent rash of graffiti appeared in Rockville Centre over the past several weeks, starting in the downtown area and spreading to residential neighborhoods.

The frequency of the graffiti has resulted in residents worrying about gang activity, but Police Commissioner Charles Gennario said that he doubts the vandalism is gang related.

“We maintain a log of all our graffiti, [and] try to attribute it to certain individuals,” he said. “We have a couple of suspects. Some of the suspects may be gang members, but we don’t think it’s organized gang activity.”

The graffiti is mostly amateur work, freeform pieces with no recognizable color pattern or tag, leading police to think gangs are unrelated.

“It runs in spurts. We’ve had this before, made an arrest and it stops,” Gennario said. “We’ve made some graffiti arrests. We’ve made about three in the last month, and we’re about to make three more.”

But Gennario said that although finding the vandals is important, the main focus of the police department, which works closely with the Department of Public Works, is to keep the village clean.

“The way we clean it up is, we initiate with a police report,” he said. “We have a pretty good program here in the village, and that’s our main concern, to clean it up. We have a lot of success with village property.”