Ocoee police search for graffiti artist responsible for tagged fence

OCOEE  When HighPoint Church members and Ocoee police officers were finished priming a fence that lines Spring Lake Elementary, they didn’t expect to come back to fresh graffiti all over it.

Last week, the church volunteers and police officers began a community project to clean up the fenced alleyway by the school — currently known as Pig Alley — before school started. The quarter-mile fence was to be painted, the trees trimmed, weeds whacked and trash collected from the trail. 

“Our police chaplains had scheduled a community project for the trail way that leads to Spring Lake,” said Ocoee Police Deputy Chief Steve McCosker. “They prepped it by painting over graffiti already existing on the wall. …They prepped the area, and we went out there Friday and noticed that someone had retagged the area with that ‘Rx’ symbol.”

McCosker said the fence had been tagged about 20 times with different colors of paint, which led him to believe the tags weren’t all done at the same time.

On Saturday, Aug. 5, the chaplains and more volunteers showed up, fixed some of the fence and painted it again, this time blue for the Blue Jays — the school’s mascot. This weekend muralists will head out to the fence and paint positive slogans and artwork on the fence panels.

As for the “Rx” symbols, Ocoee police took to its social media outlets and is trying to get the word out to find whoever is using that tag symbol. McCosker said the department plans to install cameras along the alleyway so that if anyone tries to tag the fence again, officers can capture and share the images.

“The other thing we’re asking is that since sweat equity went into that fence, if anyone sees anything on that alleyway, let us know,” McCosker said. 

He added that the chaplains have come up with a monthly cleanup schedule so they can revisit that area and do different cleanup projects.

If you have any information on who might have tagged the fence, call Ocoee Police Department at (407) 905-3160, or Crimeline at (800) 423-TIPS (8477).

Contact Danielle Hendrix at [email protected].