HARLEM — Local precinct commanders want the public's help identifying and catching a prolific graffiti vandal spraying his tag all over the city.
The moniker "Asif" has been spotted in at least 50 different spots in Harlem, East Harlem, Hamilton Heights and the Upper West Side. A couple of tags have even been seen on the Willis Avenue Bridge and in the West Village.
East Harlem's 25th Precinct commander Capt. Thomas Harnisch has asked for the public's help, tweeting out, "Like to find #25PCT #graffiti vandal #ASIF. Know him? Or seen his #tag? Please DM us."
In the neighboring 28th Precinct, Inspector Olufunmilo Obe posted a picture of volunteers cleaning up a tag on Fredrick Douglass Boulevard.
Residents of Harlem are also fed up with the defacement.
Columbo Marte works at a pharmacy on 94th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, which was hit with an Asif tag last month.
"It is disrespectful," he said of the graffiti. "We have to clean it up. We have to go out and buy the paint, buy the supplies. It takes time, I have other work to do."
Marte spent about $30 and two hours to put two coats of paint over the tag. It hasn't been tagged since, he said.
Asif isn't the only problem in the area.
Lt. James Lombardi, who is responsible for cleaning up graffiti in East Harlem's 25th Precinct, has had to paint over nearly 500 posts from various taggers in the area.
“They like to see their name, they are narcissists,” said Lombardi. “These people just go out and destroy other people’s property and there is just no reason for it."
It took a couple of weeks and 14 officers to survey the entire precinct in June, but now about 90 percent of the graffiti has been painted over, Lombardi said.
Police made a list of each location, then painted a square over the graffiti. If vandals spray paint the spot again, officers paint over it as soon as possible. Eventually, they stop trying to tag that spot, Lombardi said.
The biggest challenge to getting rid of graffiti is resources. Police reached out to elected officials but only City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito gave the precinct about $500 for paint.
While Lombardi would like to focus on graffiti, his job as head of Special Operations also covers more serious crime like drugs and domestic violence, which must take priority, he said.
“If they gave me a crew of 30 people I’d clean up the whole city,” Lombardi said.
Although Asif's 50 tags seem small compared to the 500 Lombardi has found in his precinct, the mystery vandal has made the biggest impression on the area, the lieutenant said. Taggers who go by "Crew" and "Harlem" are very active too, he said.
While they don’t know who Asif is, officers from the five precincts he has tagged log every incident and work together.
In almost all cases, people are happy to see the graffiti gone.
But Andrew Montana, who owns a sign installation company — Service Sign Erectors — on East 131st Street, likes the graffiti all over his old building. When officers came to clean it up he asked them not to paint over the tags.
“Everything looks like that nowadays,” he said, pointing to a newly constructed residential building across the street.
Montana views his building, and the graffiti on it, as one of the last remaining relics of a grittier neighborhood. He likes that his building stand out from the “monolithic, pre-fab” ones being built in the neighborhood.
“I think of the whole building as a mural,” he said.
