11/26/09 Redmond

By Doug Johnson

It's a sight those walking through the campuses of Obsidian Middle School and Lynch Elementary in Redmond couldn't miss Thursday morning.

"The back side of a school shed over here, looked like some fresh graffiti," says Martin Clipfell, who lives close by.

"It's just getting out of hand, I don't know if parents aren't watching their kids, or letting them run free," says Bob Watkins, who walks his dog through the schools.

Five buildings there were all tagged with the same four symbols. Some of the graffiti is too offensive to show, and some are drug references.

"I don't think the kids really need to see that profanity on the backside of somebody's shed facing this playground," says Clipfell.

At Redmond High School similar graffiti was also found on the side of the gym. After staff at Obsidian cleaned some of the graffiti Wednesday, by Thursday already fresh graffiti was back in the same spot. Redmond Police say this is the thrid major graffiti incident in the last month and a half.

"Tried to get away from that in a large city and it looks like it's following us to the small cities as well," Watkins says.

Last week at least six different buildings and several cars were tagged between Black Butte Boulevard and Antler Avenue in southwest Redmond. Police say the two incidents are not related, and no arrests have been made in either case. But there was an arrest in the third case in Umatilla Park. Neighbors of Lynch Elementary and Obsidian Middle School say that they don't see a corrilation between an increase in graffiti and an increase in crime, still it just doesn't make their neighborhood look good.

"I think the graffiti in my opinion is young kids in a gang wanna be type graffiti that they're putting up there, and hopefully they'll get over that," Clipfell says.