Police Are Real Winner in Graffiti Tag Contest : Crime: The game between rival crews was to spray-paint the most initials along a stretch of freeway. But officers responded by arresting eight and say up to 60 youths may eventually be charged.

It began as a dangerous contest between two groups of teen-age taggers.

The participants had to spray-paint their crew’s initials as many times as possible along a stretch of freeway--dashing across busy freeway lanes, scaling billboard poles, slipping around barbed-wire barriers, hanging from freeway signs.

The winners of the graffiti war would have bragging rights. The losers would have to disband their crew and never spray-paint the group’s name again.

For five nights last month, the tagging crews splattered a seven-mile stretch of the Long Beach (710) Freeway between the Artesia (91) Freeway and downtown Long Beach. They sprayed sound walls, overpasses, on-ramps and off-ramps. Some commercial buildings were covered from the ground up to 10 feet--apparently as high as the taggers could reach. A few business owners found graffiti on their roofs.

When all of the aerosol paint canisters were dropped, police said, the freeway stretch had been hit with about 25,000 “tags” (crew initials). Damages approached $100,000.

“This is definitely the worst case of damage from graffiti we’ve seen,” said Long Beach Police Officer Barry Fowks. Fowks and his brother, Officer Bob Fowks, led an investigation into the torrent of vandalism, which occurred from May 14 to May 19 from the Broadway exit in Long Beach to the Artesia Freeway. Sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers also participated in the investigation.

Six youths and two adults have been arrested, but police say as many as 60 suspects may be charged before the investigation is wrapped up.

More important, the Fowks brothers say, they hope to break up two of the most aggressive tagging crews in the area--rivals that have long spread graffiti throughout several cities along the Los Angeles-Orange county line, including La Mirada, Whittier, Buena Park, Fullerton and La Habra.

*

According to the Fowkses’ investigation, leaders of the two groups met sometime before May 14 and challenged each other to a battle. The rules were simple: Taggers would swarm into an area and paint their crew’s three-letter initials over every available surface during a specified time period. Then crew members would take video or still pictures and count the total number of initials (tags). The crew with the most tags would win.

The two crews chose the Long Beach Freeway because it offered a cleaner canvas for the battle, Bob Fowks said. “They found some large, pretty virgin territory and went to make a name for themselves.”

The taggers also believed their initials would not be recognized so easily outside their home turf, he said.

But before members of the two crews could finish their game, the Fowks brothers were on the case. They noticed a proliferation of new graffiti as they cruised the Long Beach Freeway May 16, but the initials were unfamiliar.

“If these kids had been local, it wouldn’t have been a mystery to us,” Barry Fowks said. “We would’ve known who they were by the names they used. But we didn’t recognize the tags, so it took a lot of investigating.”

On May 17, a witness saw at least two teen-agers spraying paint on the loading-dock doors of an industrial park business near the Artesia Freeway, off Susana Road. The witness reported the taggers’ license plate number to sheriff’s deputies.

That night and the next, sheriff’s deputies, California Highway Patrol officers and the Long Beach police officers independently made vehicle stops that helped fill in the pieces. One car with four juveniles had 26 cans of spray paint. Authorities also stopped a truck with two teen-agers who had fresh paint on their fingers.

Eventually, the three agencies began comparing notes. Highway Patrol Officer Randy Campbell, who recently had been named the region’s graffiti abatement coordinator, contacted the Fowkses, who had been in touch with sheriff’s deputies.

The Fowkses called city graffiti abatement workers while Campbell contacted Caltrans crews. They began to paint out the markings by the end of the week, before taggers could count up all of their initials and declare a winner.

On June 21, Long Beach police cars filled with police, CHP officers and sheriff’s deputies descended on 12 households in Los Angeles and Orange counties. They arrested two adults and five juveniles. Each was charged with felony vandalism and conspiracy. Another boy was arrested later in the week. The juveniles’ names have not been released because of their ages.

The two adults, Michael J. Ross of Whittier and John Ehredt of La Mirada, both 18, pleaded not guilty June 23 to five counts of felony vandalism and one count of conspiracy. They are each being held in lieu of $160,000 bail. If convicted, each faces a year in prison and fines of up to $50,000.

The juveniles, if convicted, could be fined and lose their driving privileges until age 21. They could also be put on an 8 p.m. curfew seven nights a week for the next year and be required to maintain at least a C average in school and attend classes every day. Alternately, violators could find themselves spending six months in a youth camp.

Authorities are planning another sweep of taggers’ homes and expect to make more arrests.