City police are calling up reinforcements to combat a rising tide of G-8-related graffiti and illegal postering.
The city police graffiti specialist said he's surprised by the amount of spray painting, drawing and posting of activist stickers and posters throughout the city in preparation for next week's political summit.
"They didn't see this level of it in Quebec City or Ottawa until just before the (Summit of the Americas and G-20) assemblies," said Const. Marcel Dubois.
Dubois said about 60 incidents of posters, stickers, drawings or spray painted graffiti turn up each day in the city's downtown.
Right now, about a dozen student workers are busy removing the visual pollution from walls and lampposts with at least another eight civilians to be mobilized with more added later depending on need, said Dubois.
"We're prepared to deal with an onslaught of graffiti of the scope they saw in Quebec City, Ottawa and in Seattle," he said.
"So far, we've kept our head above water and we'll hopefully be able to keep a handle on it."
Some of the stickers lash out at security forces by featuring gas masks while painted graffiti depicts a crossed-out G-8.
He said graffiti artists and handbill distributors can legally post their work on kiosks specifically provided for that purpose.
Otherwise, they could be arrested, said Dubois, hinting at least one person has so far been picked up by police for the illegal activity.
But much of the sprayed graffiti isn't necessarily the work of political activists, said Dubois.
"The majority of it is from local graffiti artists jumping on the bandwagon," he said.
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