Vandals Target Spray Paint At Ojai Creates!
Window breakage at East Ojai Avenue store leads to theft
By Linda Harmon
The Grinch was busy at Ojai Creates on East Ojai Avenue before Iris Williams and Kirk Lowry were awakened by a call from Senior Deputy Jim Popp shortly before 7 a.m. Saturday.
“They broke the glass in the front door,” said Williams, co-owner of the art store her husband Lowry. “The only thing they took was spray paint.”
According to Popp and Williams, 12 cans of art quality Montana spray paint valued at approximately $100 were taken, and damage to the store was confined to broken glass in the front door.
“I was going by on my morning walk and the door was wide open so I called the police,” said Pam Phillips, who saw no one and added she had to dial information to get the phone number. “You’d think I would remember after living here my whole life.”
“There must have been people that walked by and saw the door open,” said Lowry. “There are all kinds of people around in the morning that could have walked in and taken something. No one did and that’s the good part of Ojai.”
Williams and Lowry still hadn’t decided about whether they would replace the paints.
“I am just thinking the thing all over,” said Williams, whose first reaction was to take all the spray paints out of the store and off the shelves in their new Ventura store. “The whole reason we stocked them to begin with was we recognize that graffiti is an art. It’s different than just these kids tagging and peeing on your walls. The part that really gets me is the people that did this don’t know anything about graffiti.”
“They left the airbrushes,” added Lowry, “and many other expensive items were left untouched.”
“It’s a delicate issue, some consider it vandalism,” said Williams of stocking graffiti art supplies. “Our whole push was to show there was another level to it. We were just talking last night about staging a ‘graffiti paint-off.’ We’d provide the canvases and a place to paint and the artists would get a chance to display their work. To me that’s the next level.”
Instead, in the morning light Williams said, “My first reaction is no more of it in the store and to take down my graffiti window out front that says ‘imagine.’ But that’s reacting to what one person did, and to punish the rest of the people that are serious artists isn’t right. It takes a lot of talent to do what they do. To get a line that’s crisp and clean and combine all the design elements that go into it. It’s more about writing words on walls. It is real creative expression.”
“No,” concluded Williams, who considers graffiti some the new wave of original art. “We won’t punish everybody else.”
If you have any knowledge concerning the break-in please call the Ojai Police Department at 646-1414.
It’s time for honest citizens to start an Ojai Citizens Patrol and help the Police stop criminal activity. All ex-military and law enforcement should organize and create an effective voluntary neighborhood watch program.
Ojai Citizens Patrol Idea
19 Dec 09 at 9:13 pm
Every resident can help, not just ex-military and law enforcement. We all need to look out for each other and speak up when something is happening.
annonymous
20 Dec 09 at 10:11 am
Just in case you are not familiar with this, we have what is known as the Ojai Valley City Watch Program, which was started a year or two ago by Sergeant Joe Evans. He was recently transfered but I believe an officer named Randy has stepped in his shoes. Here’s some info about it from an old Press Release:
Ojai Valley City Watch
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department is pleased to announce a new crime prevention program to the city of Ojai and the unincorporated areas of the Ojai Valley. Friends, neighbors and local business can participate in a program that brings the concerned citizens, local businesses and local deputies together, working as a team to create safer neighborhoods in the Ojai Valley. This will encourage better communication and problem solving on a variety of issues in your community.
The City Watch Program simply put is an e-mail based program that allows citizens to communicate with an officer at their local police station. This program will give residents and the business community a personal contact in the Police Department that serves the community. Together we will become a strong team, creating a safer and healthier environment for us all to live and work.
To sign up for your Ojai Valley City Watch just send an e-mail with your name and the area where you live, to Ojaivalley.Citywatch@ventura.org. You will receive a response to your request and that is all there is to it.
The program will provide information to citizens and businesses about criminal activities in their neighborhoods. This information will be of sufficient detail as to allow the individual to help identify crime patterns in their area and relay information about those crimes directly to police and their neighbors.
Our goal is to have 15,000 people in the Ojai Valley, who are willing to receive information and use that information to help us catch criminals and stop them from committing crimes in our neighborhoods.
How does this all work?
You will be receiving three different types of City Watch Alerts. This information will come directly from Deputies and Detectives who work in your neighborhoods.
City Watch Alert – This is an alert about a crime or a series of crimes occurring in your neighborhood. This type of alert is important and should be read and forwarded to all your neighbors and friends as soon as possible.
City Watch Information – This is information that is very useful but not of an urgent nature. This may include new laws and how they affect you and your family. It may also give information on disaster preparedness.
City Watch Crime Prevention – This is information that you can use to make your home and environment safer and less attractive to criminals. This is also used to send out relevant information on Neighborhood Watch Programs.
After you receive an alert, we ask you to forward the alert to all your friends and neighbors in the Ojai Valley. This will allow everyone to create their own City Watch e-mail list of friends and neighbors. This way there will be hundreds of people, forwarding alerts to thousands of friends and neighbors in our valley.
To give you an example of how well this works, this same program started in the City of Thousand Oaks with 30 local citizens in March of 2007. In November 2007 they had over 22,000 people receiving their alerts. The program was directly responsible for solving many crimes and the prevention of many more. They were also instrumental in the capture of numerous criminals that were working in our neighborhoods.
City Watch can also improve the police services you already enjoy. Lets say you live on a street with people who tend to drive too fast. You send the information to City Watch; I forward this information to our traffic supervisor, who will assign a deputy to work traffic on your street. The supervisor will return your e-mail with his plan and a simple time estimate of when the problem will be addressed.
We will be working on bringing people and resources from the City of Ojai, California Highway Patrol and other Ventura County Agencies into City Watch so that we can address many of the other problems we face in our neighborhoods.
By creating a large team of citizens, Deputies, and Public Officials who care, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department believes we can make a positive difference in the quality of life here in “The Ojai Valley”.
It is important to remember most criminals are creatures of opportunity. They like easy targets and do not like to be seen while they work. They count on people minding their own business and not calling for help. How nice would it be for criminals in our valley to know there are 15,000 people watching and all of them are looking forward to calling police.
To sign up for your Ojai Valley City Watch just send an e-mail with your name and the area where you live, to Ojaivalley.Citywatch@ventura.org. You will receive a response to your request and that is all there is to it.
If we join together in this effort we will send a message to the criminals that “we are all watching and we look forward to calling the police”.
For further information on this or other community programs call the Ojai Police Department, 805-646-1414.
ADMIN ADDITION: The latest Citywatch information can be found at http://ovnblog.com/?p=2203, which is always linked on the OVN homepage.
Suza
20 Dec 09 at 6:49 pm
I drove by the Ojai Creates business at approx 7am on Sat. I did not notice anything amiss in the window area. I would be happy to join the local neighbors to patrol the businesses and homes.
Simeon
20 Dec 09 at 8:16 pm
Let’s start the Ojai Citizen’s Patrol (OCP). It won’t be a problem to run background checks on prospective members. There are plenty retired military in Ojai. Let’s get started.
OCP
20 Dec 09 at 10:33 pm
All the talk here about citizen watch groups is fine, but I’d appreciate it if Ojai Creates would explain their stocking of spray paint for “serious graffiti artists”. Without overreacting like bloggers tend to do I’d like to know just what Ojai Creates means before I respond. Thank you
M. Buonarroti
21 Dec 09 at 7:37 pm
But there’s no need to worry
There’s no reason to fuss
Just go on about your work now
And leave the drivin’ to us
And we’ll be watching you
No matter what you do
And you can do your part
By watchin’ others too
CRobbins
22 Dec 09 at 9:44 am
M. Buo,
Everyone knows that grafitti is modern art, beautiful pieces prepared by poor latino kids, who are underprivileged by choice; artistic freedom.
These poor children should not have to break into stores to steal their paintbrushes of choice. How dare our schools not provide these for them. It is society’s fault that these youth were forced to steal. Would you fault a starving man for stealing a loaf of bread for his family?
Why do you think an art store would stock art supplies.
Pinky
22 Dec 09 at 10:49 am