WASHINGTON — Rock Creek Parkway is a popular cut through across D.C. with some beautiful scenery, but lately it seems more graffiti has been littering the landscape. The DC Department of Public Works has a crew to clean up graffiti when they spot it or are called on it.
According to a WUSA9 analysis of the Mayor’s Call Center, 64 calls were made to 311 about graffiti in the first five days of 2020.
Here's how that stacks up to the past several years: 77 calls were made in the first five days of January 2019, 25 calls were made in that same time frame in 2018 and 64 calls were made in 2017. Flush that over the whole year and D.C. gets an average of 5,400 calls annually about graffiti.
WUSA9 alerted DPW to the spray paint designs along Rock Creek Parkway by the M Street overpass.
"Taggers are using commercial corridors as an opportunity to be seen by more people," a DPW spokesperson said.
The bottom line is don't just look at graffiti and shrug. If you spot it, report it to the city's 311, and DPW says a crew will clean it up within 10 days.