Note to graffiti vandals: if you make your mark with acid (or onto sacred MTA territory) it's going to add some years to your jail time. According to the Daily News, 19-year-old Brooklynite Alexander Thompson etched his tags (GEAR and G7) into a Queens bus shelter with acid and got a 42-count indictment. Yesterday—when it was reported that vandalism was up last year in Queens—he was told he faces four years in prison for damaging 21 glass bus shelters in 2009 (racking up $5,100 in damages during that time).
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown declared, "We will not allow such individuals to mar the beauty of our city" (bus shelters are beautiful, after all), "or threaten to return us to the days when our transit system and our highways and buildings were covered with graffiti."
He's likely referring to the '80s, when the Vandal Squad, Mayor Koch and New York's finest were up against all those kids carrying spray cans—check it out in this video.
