It’s 10 p.m. — do you know where your children are?

The classic question asked in old public service announcements may be coming back into vogue after recent cases involving boys behaving badly after dark have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in property damage across Kalispell.

Not only have the crimes raised that question, they have also raised the ire of residents as well as Police Chief Roger Nasset.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 5, Nasset was using his personal time to drive up and down Meridian Road, out by the U.S. 93 tunnel and the U.S. 93 bypass sound wall — for the fourth or fifth time in several days — where graffiti had been continually popping up. He eventually went home after finding nothing.

“I got home and I got a call probably 25 minutes later saying, ‘Hey chief, five minutes after you went off, we caught them,’” Nasset said. “I thought it sure would have been nice if I could’ve caught them, but I was just happy it was over with.”

It was another off-duty law enforcement officer — Flathead County Sheriff’s Deputy Matthew VanDerark — who witnessed 17-year-olds Reilly Stephenson of Kalispell and Brandon Hegstad, a county resident, tagging a box near North Meridian Road and Three Mile Drive while accompanied by a 16-year-old girl.

Stephenson and Hegstad were arrested and face preliminary charges of criminal mischief and underage possession of tobacco, while the girl was released without charges — but not for long.

“We have now sent the paperwork ... to charge the 16-year-old female for accountability [to criminal mischief] in being present in many, many of those instances and not saying anything,” Nasset said. “We know for a fact that she was there not only the night they were caught but many, many times when they were doing it previously.”

According to Nasset, the total value of the damage caused by the graffiti will reach $10,000 or more, rising to the same level of damage caused in a recent BB gun vandalism spree. He said he had a list of more than 400 locations throughout Kalispell tagged with graffiti.

Nasset’s only disappointment in the arrests is that they could have come sooner in the months-long graffiti spree. He said that prior to being caught, the trio went into a store at 1 a.m. and purchased several cans of spray paint, “graffiti markers,” and blank stickers for tagging.

He said the department has contacted many local retail shops and told them to look out for youths buying such items together at odd times.

“I would hope that, in a perfect world, a clerk would recognize three young kids under 18 buying graffiti equipment and give us a call and say, ‘Just a heads up, don’t know if it means anything but you might want to check into it,’ because we know that they’ve done it before,” Nasset said.

“We know that they’ve bought all of these accessories together and maybe we could have caught them six months ago, maybe we could have caught them three months ago and saved a lot of the vandalism that occurred.”

Nasset said it was just a matter of awareness and that clerks get busy just like anyone else and he wasn’t placing blame. Rather, he said it just showed the need to work together more.

JUST THREE DAYS AFTER Stephenson and Hegstad were arrested, the Flathead County Attorney’s Office filed motions requesting felony criminal mischief charges against four youths arrested after a separate vandalism spree involving windows being shot out of more than 100 vehicles across town.

Court documents allege Shadeau Fritz, 16, of Kalispell; Maclean Ryder, 17, of Kila; Francisco Diaz Manzo, 17, a county resident; and Matthew Winchester, 14, of Kalispell; each admitted either to police or family that they were involved in the crimes.

According to those documents, Fritz and Winchester told police that Fritz was at the wheel when they made a big circle around town, went into the west side of town and then down into Evergreen while each of the four took turns shooting out windows.

Winchester allegedly said he was present when 50 or more windows were shot out, but that he personally shot out no more than 10, while Manzo allegedly admitted shooting out six windows.

A court document in Ryder’s case alleges an officer listened to Ryder’s side of the conversation when he called his mother from the telephone in the booking room and heard him admit to his mother that he was involved in shooting out the windows.

Nasset said there are many comparisons that could be made between the BB gun crimes and the graffiti crimes, but that there is also one very strong difference.

“We’ve got a feel of remorse and shame from the kids that did the BB gun act — there was absolutely none of that from the two kids responsible for the graffiti,” he said. “As a matter of fact, they bragged about it in their interviews, they smiled quite often about what they had done, and made the comment that really they didn’t hurt anyone because it wasn’t private property.”

He said their thought was that since it was public property, they didn’t damage anything that belongs to anybody, which is inaccurate since everyone pays for damage to public property.

“What he said was inaccurate, too. They did do a lot of private property damage in conjunction with it,” Nasset said.

NASSET POINTS TO one factor — a lack of parental guidance — seems to have a lot to do with both crime sprees and with many similar crimes committed by youths.

He said that  Stephenson and Hegstad allegedly committed most of their crimes between midnight and 6 a.m.

“At early 17 years old and, when this started, 16 years old, they should have been home in bed,” he said. “So where is the parental guidance? Even if they were staying at a friend’s house, the parents of the friend should have known where they were.”

Nasset testified during a detention hearing for one of the graffiti suspects and said that one of the parents claimed at the hearing that he knew where his child was at the time — staying with the other suspect.

“Well, they just went to the other house and then did whatever they wanted,” Nasset said. “That’s really not knowing where their kid is.”

He said the timing of the BB gun crimes was similar, occurring during the late night and early morning hours. He put the majority of the responsibility on parents.

“You can make excuses all day long, but that’s where the responsibility lies. That’s firmly the way I believe,” he said. “I grew up in a family where if you messed up you got spanked. There’s a lot of different philosophies out there, and that’s not to say one’s right or wrong, but I think you can see successes with one probably more often than the other, reasonably.”

One of the reasons why parental guidance is so important in preventing such crimes, Nasset said, is because the best way to deal with them is prevention, since the culprits are extremely difficult to catch after the fact.

He added that catching graffiti suspects in particular is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

“I’ve heard the comment several times, ‘Well put a game camera out,’” Nasset said. “We’re not trying to capture game on video, we’re trying to capture humans. When they see video and it’s a game camera, they’ll take it, they’ll steal it. So it’s got to be hidden, and in a lot of these locations there isn’t a way to hide them.”

Nasset also said that while graffiti is very visible and may pop up several times in the same location, it may show up once, then not again in the same spot for months.

He also said law enforcement efforts are hampered by limited personnel.

“With that being said, we still have a job to do and we’ll find ways to do it no matter how innovative we have to be to get it accomplished,” Nasset said.

One way they are now trying to get that job accomplished is by increasing enforcement of a lesser crime already on the books — curfews.

Due to the expansive nature of the recent crimes and the age of the suspects, Nasset said he has informed his officers that they will now take a nearly zero-tolerance stance for curfew violations.

“We’re going to start enforcing that much more stringently than we have in the past,” he said. “We have been enforcing it, but the officers have been using their discretion. I don’t want to say I’m taking that discretion away, but I’m advising them that if [youths] are violating that curfew, let’s hold them accountable.”

According to city code, it is illegal for any minor to “loiter, idle, wander, stroll, operate a motor vehicle or play in or upon the public streets, highways, roads, alleys, parks, playgrounds or other public grounds, public places and public buildings, places of amusement and entertainment, vacant lots or other unsupervised places” from 10:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. or sunrise on Sunday through Thursday and 1:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. or sunrise on Saturdays, Sundays or regular school holidays during the school year and midnight to 6 a.m. or sunrise when school is not in session.

Reporter Jesse Davis may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at jdavis@dailyinterlake.com.