A European and international reality

• Graffiti is a practice which exists in almost in all countries and which is very present in Europe
• There is significant cross-border movement of graffiti perpetrators, especially via battles, games, festivals and tourism
• Acts of graffiti are more and more aggressive, with graffiti attacks having already taken place in France, Germany, Spain, Russia…

The desire of COLPOFER members to combat this scourge led to the creation of this Graffiti Working Group in 2011.
This group, which meets at least twice a year, systematically welcomes representatives of the different police forces or railway safety services and state law enforcement. During the first meeting which was held in Bern on 15 April, the participants validated the following action plan for 2014:

The concrete and pragmatic action plan aims to respond to the development of common principles and expectations expressed by the member organisations

• on the protection of surfaces,
• actions facilitating the cleaning up of damage caused by graffiti (preventive & remedial actions)
• and ways to better apprehend and fight against graffiti vandals at international level, by facilitating data and information exchanges regarding acts of violence and movements of graffiti vandals between member organisations of the working group.

The next meeting scheduled at the beginning of October 2014 in Italy will be the occasion to present the first results of this plan, especially thanks to the creation of a specific graffiti COLPOFER network which enables specialist operational information between experts to be rapidly exchanged outside WG meetings.
The presentation of a European map assessing where graffiti crew vandals are located and a list of internet websites dedicated to graffiti will be also on the agenda.