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HUGE DISCLAIMER: We do not condone graffiti. The images in the slideshow are cropped forms of graffiti, taken out of context and viewable as art. On a broader city landscape, where they exist, these pieces reflect destruction of property, plain and simple. They may be one person's form of self-expression, but they are visited on unwilling and unwitting victims.
That being said, even Lieutenant Sam Lunetta, of the Buffalo State College Campus Police and the Graffiti Task Force division of the Buffalo Police, can understand that some graffiti can be seen as art. On a much deeper level he sees the trouble graffitists and taggers cause to property owners in terms of cost and strife, and he's made it his job to apprehend and educate those who impose their will on others.
Other than the fact that Lunetta recognizes graffiti as vandalism, his biggest worry is that he's going to find a kid lying on the sidewalk some day after breaking into a ten-story high building to lean out of a window to tag a wall. Talk about giving your life to your art.
About style: There are various types of graffiti, all of which Lunetta has documented in a PowerPoint presentation he has prepared for educational purposes. There are throw-ups, basic outlines without any fill color; tagging, which is basically the graffitist’s handle; and there is slashing, which is a 'dis or drawing a line through others' graffiti. There is nothing particularly visually pleasing about any of these forms and they take no extraordinary skill.
This is pure vandalism for the gratification of the person with the paint can. In terms of art, this is the drawing your mother might hang on the fridge that no other person on earth would give a damn about. Unless it pissed them off, which is exactly how Lunetta puts it. He tends to be in the majority here, along with business and homeowners who have to pay out of their own pocket to remove the graffiti.
Then there are pieces—those are the elaborate, colorful artforms that might find their way into the arts category—if they didn't make property owners so upset. This is the graffiti that stirs debate. This is your subjective argument in a pressurized can. This is the civil war in living color.