The graffiti wall at the Redmond Skate Park has an interesting history and is a symbol of how a Department of Justice initiative called COPS or Community-Oriented Policing Services helped the Redmond Police Department squelch a whopper of a headache 15 years ago.

Officer Bill Corson was one of two Redmond Police employees (with Officer Nick Lovell, who is now a security guard at Redmond High School) instrumental in getting the wall up and running.

Corson explained, “Back in ‘92, Seattle was being hit hard by infamous ‘taggers’ all over. A crew called BTM (thought to stand for “Big Time Mob”) was hitting Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond — they hit the city hall, the library, everywhere.”

Corson was assigned to hunt for the taggers.

“I started setting up surveillance day and night,” he said. “I got bit by a lot of mosquitoes while hiding in the bushes, with no luck.”

Around that time, the Old Fire House Teen Center was just starting up, as a way to keep youth off the streets and out of trouble. Corson noticed a group of kids milling around there, followed them and saw them dump some spray paint cans.

“Taggers then were a sub-culture of hip-hop and rebellion,” he added. “All over New York, Amsterdam and other big cities, they would do really good ‘pieces,’ as they called them. There was some very sophisticated artwork. And ‘getting up’ was when you could show your work and your name on a wall in a public place.”

Corson suspected that this was their motivation. When he approached the kids with the spray cans, they taunted him, saying, “What are you gonna do? Arrest me? I don’t care.”

He thought listening to their complaints couldn’t hurt and might help.

“What can I do to get you to stop painting my city?,” Corson asked.

“We went up to the old Nike (missile) site on Education Hill, abandoned buildings. A kid named Mike, who went by the name ‘Smog,’ said, ‘You folks, society, put millions of dollars into sports programs. I don’t do football or baseball. I’m an artist. But you don’t support me. We don’t go over beautiful things. We go over what society thinks is more important.”

Corson continued, “They started doing things with spray cans that were just incredible. Some were letters or words, all different styles. Or a guy carrying a girl. Some expressed sadness, emotion or love. They said they had no legal walls to do this.”

He offered, “How about if I get you a place to do this?”

The kids seemed skeptical but replied, “If you can do that for us, we’ll do everything in our power to control the graffiti.”

Corson reasoned, “If I can get these guys on my side, I can get them off my back.”

Yet he didn’t want to make it so easy for them that they would take the wall for granted. He wanted to make them participants and told them they’d have to go with him to talk with the City Council, former Mayor Rosemarie Ives and parks personnel.

“The kids were part of all this — they even said there should be a permit system to include lots of people using the wall,” said Corson. “Imagine them using the word ‘permit!,” he laughed.

Throughout the process, he saw a gradual change in the kids’ attitudes and a trickle-down effect.

“These were older guys and the younger taggers in junior high became influenced by them,” he noted. “These were some displaced or homeless kids with drug problems or hard backgrounds. They really sort of lived on the streets like little outlaws.”

They liked the idea of having their wall in the downtown area where they had easy access to public transportation. And being downtown would give them visibility, a chance to really show off their work.

That was prime property, but the City Council agreed to give them a “trial” spot. Corson went to contractors to get the materials. The wall was built by Corson, his wife and the taggers who’d previously defaced the city hall and library.

“During that time, we were barraged by criticism that we were giving in to the criminals,” Corson recalled. “There were sarcastic comments like, ‘Why don’t we just park cars there for people to steal?’”

But within two weeks of the wall’s opening, there was 67 percent less graffiti in the City of Redmond, Corson said. He’s convinced that this worked because, “the kids believed in this, they managed it, they took ownership and used peer pressure to discourage other taggers. We got nationwide attention because of the buy-in.”

Since then, Redmond Police have continued the practice of community-oriented policing, “uniting with the community to be problem solvers, not just police driving around. You can’t disengage from problems like car prowls. You have to gain trust, be accessible to gain information,” said Corson.

In recent summers, “hip-hop has kinda died, but we still do have some really good artists there (at the wall). People come from all over the country and the world to see it. Some of the original taggers went on to art school.”

Mary Stevens Decker can be reached at mdecker@reporternewspapers.com or at (425) 867-0353, ext. 5052.