CALDWELL, Idaho — A historic building in downtown Caldwell has been vandalized with illegal graffiti. In response, the city is seeking to support those affected by this tagging. However, recent incidents have raised concerns among local business owners about the impact on their community.
- Downtown Caldwell's historic building has been tagged by Illegal Graffiti.
- Tagging is nothing new to Downtown Caldwell but the city and Caldwell police department will help those impacted.
- Local business owners hope to see changes.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
"It's hard to see it," said Caldwell business owner Jeanette Purdy
On Monday the United States Postal Service office in downtown Caldwell was marked with spray-painted graffiti.
The postal office tells me it was hard seeing it and workers were disappointed that they became a target.
After being up for the day their maintenance team took the time to clean off as much graffiti as they could.
"It's pretty disheartening to drive through," said Purdy
Local business owner Jeanette Purdy tells me seeing the tagging is becoming normal for her but to see it on historical buildings it's hard to understand why. She wonders if her business is next.
"Yeah we have worried about it, sometimes we will leave stuff up front the planters have rocks that people can throw through the window and we hope we don't have to worry about that," said Purdy
Down the street, another business owner tells me they've already been a victim of tagging and try to go each day hoping it won't happen again.
"I try not to think about it too much right but yeah we just gotta make sure that we have extra security, cameras alarms, and all that good stuff Insurance," said Caldwell Business Owner Daniel Palomero
The issue of tagging in Caldwell isn't new I last reported on illegal graffiti tagging in July.
The Caldwell Police Chief Rex Ingram says the police department is aware of recent vandalism and charges could follow.
The city of Caldwell has put a clean-up graffiti project into place to help those impacted by the tagging.
Residents can submit their complaints online on the Caldwell police department crime report. From there someone will help clean up the illegal tagging for them.
"Having the resources where somebody can come out to take care of it right away I think it's amazing cause it is overwhelming to get that off it's hard to take off so having the resource locally is great," said Purdy