Graffiti Alert for Gil Cedillo

The graffiti first appeared on June 23—a series of squiggly, faintly cartoonish figures with a black outline scrawled across a white background (see second attached photo). Clearly visible from North Figueroa Street, the graffiti was prominently splashed across the entire breadth of the shutter that covers the bandshell at Sycamore Grove Park—and it was there for a little less than a week. It vanished over this past weekend—evidently painted over by graffiti clean-up crews who took a while to do the job but eventually got to it.

But any relief parkgoers may have felt in the absence of the eyesore was short-lived. As of Monday morning, the ugly scrawl was replaced by what appears to be gang graffiti—the word "Avenues" sprayed in red, and next to it, the word "Stomper" (see first photo).

Today, July 1, is former state Assemblymember Gil Cedillo's first day as the people's elected representative to Council District 1. Longtime Highland Park resident and residential apartments' landlord Mauro Garcia, who issues regular reports about graffiti and other signs of urban blight in the Highland Park area, e-mailed Cedillo and his field deputy, Conrado Terrazas, on Monday, in an effort to get the bandshell graffiti removed.

Although the graffiti was "prior to you being a council member, it would be greatly appreciated if you would address this issue," Garcia wrote to the CD 1 office.

We at Patch have another suggestion for Cedillo: Given the alarming frequency with which graffiti appears in the vicinity of the bandshell, why not get a couple of cameras installed in the area? And we hope the Northeast Division of the Los Angeles Police Department has recorded last week's graffiti as well as the latest one to try to track down the miscreants responsible.