Businesses, park buildings tagged with graffiti in Belleville

Ken Smith of Douglas Carpet said three teenage boys were on the sidewalk outside his business on Main Street in downtown Belleville on Nov. 17 and one came in the store and asked to use the bathroom.
Smith said he knew there weren’t many places in that part of town that had public restrooms, so he let the boy use the restroom. The other two boys waited outside.
The boy was in there awhile and then he left. Smith decided to check the bathroom and found writing in ink on the sink, the wall, and the top of the toilet tank. He said it was hard to write on the cement-block wall and the letters are garbled.
Smith said he was disappointed. He gave the boy a chance to use the bathroom and this is how he is repaid.
He said it’s the same type of writing as the spray paint on his garage door facing the alley, the house next to the bank, and the building in the alley behind Friends Carpets.
He said when he called Belleville police he was told they have been having trouble with teens also writing inside the rest room at Victory Station and plugging up the toilet there.
Smith described the white teens on foot as not yet 16 years of age, “because if they were 16, they’d be driving.”
“Over the summer we had sporadic issues with graffiti and damage to the fixtures in all of our parks’ bathrooms. The last one happened to be at Victory Park,” said Belleville City Manager / Police Chief Dave Robinson.