Follow the paint trail

By RALPH BARTHOLDT

Staff Writer

COEUR d'Alene — The cost of graffiti remover and wiping clothes is about $43.

A steel brush runs nine bucks.

Rollers, spray and six gallons of paint comes to $157.33.

Labor costs associated with removing spray-painted tags from the side of a parking garage is $449 and some change.

Patrick Brady agreed to foot his share of the bill during sentencing this month for his role in eight misdemeanor counts of vandalizing property by graffiti.

Brady, 19, a Coeur d’Alene tattoo artist who uses the nickname “Bull,” pleaded guilty to all the charges in First District Magistrate Court after a Coeur d’Alene Police detective followed a paint trail that began on the back wall of a pawn shop on the north side of town and ended along Lake Coeur d’Alene at North Idaho College.

Between, Brady and two other accomplices had tagged more than a dozen walls, buildings, cars and windows in public parking garages, rest rooms and private lots in Coeur d’Alene.

Using black and white spray paint, the teenagers tagged the parking garage at the Kroc Center, leaving the words “Peace Love Respect” across a 50-foot wide swath of concrete. They left their mark at North Idaho College, Wiggett’s and the Pita Pit along Sherman Avenue downtown, and at private property along Fourth Street including tags, such as “Love and God above,” and “Little Naag,” and “Bull,” and “Harm’s Way,” and “Holy Sinner,” on storage buildings and vehicles owned by Coeur d’Alene Taxi.

Detective Gus Wessel used video surveillance footage from the McEuen parking garage to zero in on an older model red Nissan that he followed to its owner, 19-year-old Jacob Austin Young, by tracking Facebook posts.

He rounded up the graffiti reports over a six-month period and learned they had almost without exception occurred in a period between March and April.

A difference in the graffiti styles led Wessel to determine there were more suspects traveling together.

“I noticed this was a much better artist, as he painted “CDA” in old English-style letters,” Wessel wrote in a report.

Young’s Facebook posts led the detective to Brady, who, when confronted, admitted to being the author of the spray-painted script.

Brady told the detective he used spray painting as a way “to display other forms of his art,” Wessel wrote in a report.

Young, who also admitted to his role in the tagging, according to police, acknowledged “the irony of defacing someone’s property with the words ‘respect.’”

Young has pleaded not guilty to seven misdemeanors. His next court appearance is Jan. 19.

In addition to the repaying the cost of cleanup, Brady was sentenced to two years’ probation, 30 days in jail or 80 hours community service, and an $800 fine.