An illegal epidemic is sweeping through a District neighborhood and residents have moved beyond fury to hopelessness.
Walk or drive down 14th Street and you won't miss it. They're on walls, fences, mailboxes, stop signs and electrical panels.
"It's a real eye sore when somebody's retaining wall is sprayed or their house is sprayed and we have that problem on 14th Street."
Neighbors said graffiti is spray painted on everything around the area that is not moving and even some things that are.
A delivery van driving down 14th Street belonging to Delicia's Market at 14th and Colorado was tagged last week.
"It's an epidemic. You can drive by here at 4 in the afternoon and see nothing come back at 6 or 7 and the stuff is on here," said one resident.
Taalib-Din Uqdah's fence has been hit repeatedly, along with his neighbors fence. "At this point, I don't know what to do. If I paint it, somebody is going to come and use it as a canvass."
Another neighbor said that is what happened to his fence. He paints his at least once a week and every time he paints it, somebody comes along a few days later and tags it.
Marvin Jones' garage door has been tagged so many times, he has given up trying to clean it.
"I was going to keep the graffiti, saw it out and attach it to the new door, because the new door is going to get vandalized again. That's my way of making peace with it."
Fourth District Councilmember Muriel Bowser said, "It burns me up because this affects how you feel about your neighborhood and we don't like people coming in here and defacing it."
Bowser said she believes most of the vandalism is work of mischievous young people, not gangs. Regardless, she planend a big graffiti clean up for the 14th Street corrider for Friday, March 28th.
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