Armed with paintbrushes, a group of Marysville seniors is taking on graffiti one wall at a time.

It’s one piece of a multi-pronged statewide effort to combat vandalism and gangs.

Lawmakers and police are hoping to get ahead of a problem that hasn’t been this bad in a decade.

“This year we’re going to aggressively attack the problem,” said Richard “Bud” Causer, 74, who heads Marysville Seniors Against Crime, a volunteer group that’s helping to clean up graffiti. “The quicker we get (paint) over, the less chance (the graffiti) will come back.”

While experts say only about a fifth of graffiti is gang-related, the volatility of gang violence has county and state officials paying close attention to the writing on the walls.

Before any graffiti is painted over, police around the county are photographing and cataloging the images.

The sheriff’s office has seen a surge in gang activity, and graffiti could be a clue as to what gangs are operating here, said sheriff’s deputy Steve Haley, who is tracking gangs.

“If it’s actual gang graffiti, sometimes they spray up a roster. That makes it easy for us,” Haley said.

Haley has identified hundreds of people who claim membership in, or are affiliated with, criminal gangs. Police officers from around the county recently started meeting to share information about gang activity.

Graffiti is often called the “newspaper of the street,” experts said. Gangs use it to claim a neighborhood or street and sometimes to boast an exploit. They also use it to recruit others.

“It’s a salesmanship issue,” Haley said. “You’ll see the same tags over and over again.”

A sheriff’s deputy was placed at Mariner High School late last year after a surge in gang activity around the school.

While school staff and students say they feel safe at Mariner, Sheriff Rick Bart said he was concerned about crime in the neighborhood, including a homicide that police have investigated for possible gang ties.

Graffiti has been seen on electrical boxes and fences around Mariner High School and Voyager Middle School.

Statistics show that graffiti most often isn’t gang-related, said Conni Kunzler, a spokeswoman for Graffitihurts.org, a program of Keep America Beautiful.

About 80 percent of graffiti is called “tagger graffiti,” often painted or drawn by teenagers, she said.

“For most people, any kind of graffiti is scary,” she said. “It does tend to increase citizen fear. They immediately think it’s a gang.”

A person or a crew of people are spray-painting their “tags” on buildings, freeway overpasses, bridges and anywhere there’s a blank wall.

Everett police detective Kevin Fairchild said there has been a spike in gang activity in Everett. However, that doesn’t mean the graffiti is related to territorial wars or other gang activity, he said.

“If you see graffiti, you shouldn’t make an assumption who did it, and it isn’t reflective of how much gang activity there is in the city,” Fairchild said.

A statewide survey conducted among law enforcement last fall showed an increase in gang activity for the first time in a decade, said Chris Johnson, policy director for state Attorney General Rob McKenna.

“We thought we solved the gang problem in the late ’90s, but now it’s coming back,” he said.

Before tougher sanctions for gang-related crimes can be written into law, the Legislature must first define gang activity, he said.

McKenna’s office intends to introduce a bill to do that during this year’s legislative session, he said.

In Marysville, the City Council is considering stiffening laws that would require property owners to clean up graffiti faster.

“The idea is to cover it up so the message that’s trying to be communicated by these individuals is disrupted,” Councilman Jeff Vaughn said.

He proposed the changes after his son’s Eagle Scout project was vandalized.

“It made me quite angry and I wanted to do something about it,” he said.

Cleaning up graffiti can be costly. Everett spent nearly $15,000 to clean up graffiti at three city parks, including Silver Lake, Walter E. Hall Skate Park and Sullivan Park. It cost about $4,000 to clean up the Marysville Skate Park when vandals hit it this summer.

Current laws give property owners up to 30 days to cover up graffiti. Vaughn wants to shorten that time frame to two days.

He also is hoping to get cooperation from retailers to keep a closer eye on spray paint and permanent markers.

Changing laws to put those items under lock and key generally doesn’t work, Kunzler said.

“We do know that rapid removal is very effective in addition to other activities and prevention,” she said.

Like Marysville, the county and Everett are in the beginning stages of trying to determine how to tackle the problem.

“We’d like to come up with something better than painting it over and over,” Haley said.

Cleaning up graffiti is going to take the community’s help, police said. People are encouraged to call 911 to report graffiti so police can document it. The graffiti should be removed as soon as possible or likely more will follow.

“Before there was occasional graffiti. Now it seems to be on an epidemic scale, and not just here but all over the county,” Fairchild said. “It’s going to take all of us, police, the community and schools if we have a chance to mitigate the problem.”

In Marysville, Nancy Rusden, 60, doesn’t mind painting walls if it helps keep the city safe.

Plus, there’s an added benefit to cleaning up the city.

“The nice thing about this is that we have fun doing it,” she said. “We’re laughing and we’re doing something good for the community.”

Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.