San Francisco Police Investigate Massive ‘Graffiti Mob' in Mission District

San Francisco police are investigating what some are calling a massive graffiti mob in the Mission District. 

The attack left several homes and businesses vandalized and triggered street fights.

Spray painting over graffiti on a Monday morning is not unusual for Jose Feliciano, he does it about three times a month.

But cleaning up Monday morning's vandalism on his boss's garage door was a whole other level of frustration.

“If you catch someone doing it, and you get into it with them, then you wind up being in a situation you don't want to be in,” said Feliciano. 

People said they're used to the occasional graffiti in the neighborhood but on Friday, they described a large crowd of people that painted up the entire block.

Jose Nelson Fernandez said on Friday that about 200 people were spray painting everything in sight, including walls and parklets.

San Francisco Police Captain Gavin McEachern said no one called the police to report the crowd.

But on Monday, he joined his graffiti specialist to figure out how this incident was organized and who was involved. 

Officer Martin Ferreira said these kinds of large scale incidents can sometimes get dangerous.

“They get together, and sometimes people in the graffiti community, have issues with one another and fights will break out,” said Ferreira. 

Business owners said the cost of the cleanup is something they're also upset about.

During the pandemic, the city suspended fines for property owners if they don't quickly clean up the graffiti, but, “Recently, legislation was reintroduced to reinstate the fines, and this is causing a lot of anxiety for business owners because they're getting tagged by large groups of people,” said Sharky Laguana of the San Francisco Small BUsiness Commission. 

He said San Francisco is unique because many other large cities have crews that clear up the graffiti, rather than making business and property owners foot the bill.