Right here in sunny San Diego a brand new technology is being used to catch graffiti vandals. The high-tech tracking system tracks graffiti in a database, allowing law enforcement to keep track of individual vandals. This makes it easier for prosecutors to seek jail time and restitution after the taggers have been arrested. The tracking system is called Graffiti Tracker.

Graffiti Tracker is being used by the entire San Diego County. In the fiscal year that ended in June, the city of San Diego logged more than 15,000 incidents of graffiti and spent more than $2 million tracking down the responsible parties and cleaning up the mess, Mayor Jerry Sanders said.

Graffiti GPS Tracker is a web-based digital database that collects and analyzes acts of graffiti. Here’s basically how the Graffiti tracking system works:

Public work crews use a GPS system enabled camera to take photos of graffiti, and record the date, time and location. Monikers and other identifying imprints are often seen in graffiti, so the program can link defaced property to individual taggers. That information is kept in a database that police and prosecutors can search to determine a tagger’s patterns or geographic areas.

Source: 10news.com