Graffiti 'SWAT teams' helping clean up city

More on Houston's new anti-graffiti initiative and the $2.2 million the city is spending on it: One of the weapons in the battle is an HPD "graffiti SWAT squad." The squad — a group of Harris County probationers dispatched to paint over graffiti hot spots — went into action Saturday on Little York Road in north Houston, KHOU reports. Of course, it's not a real SWAT team: "I just say the Paint SWAT Team because when we get it, it’s all about just taking it down. There’s no options," Tony Emmanuel with HPD Neighborhood Protection told Channel 11. (Check Emmanuel out in KHOU's video report. We think he has a career ahead as a graffiti-fighting action hero.)

The graffiti SWAT team is part of the city's most aggressive anti-graffiti campaign ever, which also includes a "paint bank" to offer property owners help in cleaning up tags, increased rewards for information leading to graffiti-related arrests and surveillance cameras. HPD's Jack Hanagriff said the cameras would be used to catch taggers in the act: “They don’t want to be known. They talk in code, they use handles or code names,” Hanagriff said. It's not clear where or when the cameras would be installed.