A man who admitted to tagging more than 100 properties around the city, was handed a six month suspended probation sentence. Mitchell Krevenchuck appeared in a Fort McMurray courtroom last Wednesday. He’s also required to work 10 hours of community service and pay a $100 surcharge. Krevenchuck plead guilty to two counts of mischief under $5000 on Oct. 29, 2014. Two other charges of mischief were dropped.
Councillor Tyran Ault introduced a motion to council to create a graffiti bylaw. While he won’t give his opinion on the sentence, he does commend Wood Buffalo RCMP for concentrating on the issue.
“It shows that the community at large is fed up with this issue of graffiti vandalism. You saw a lot of comments through social media, phone calls, emails about all of these cases. I don’t think there’s one individual case taking precedence over the other, I think it’s just the community that wants to see this place look great,” says Ault.
Krevenchuck was 20-years-old when police conducted a search warrant of a Fort McMurray home on April 11, 2014. Police arrested him and seized more than 100 items, including drugs, graffiti materials and about $2,400. Wood Buffalo RCMP started investigating Krevenchuck on March 14, 2014. RCMP says it spent countless hours investigating, taking statements and doing surveillance. Krevenchuck was identified as the person responsible for the “PUBES”, “PUBE” and “PEWB” tags.
The sentence comes at a time when the RMWB is trying to stop an onset of graffiti in Fort McMurray. It says graffiti is on the rise in Wood Buffalo, and it’s only going to be more visible when spring hits.
“Once temperatures dip to about -10 for about 24 consecutive hours, it becomes very, very difficult to clean. So throughout the winter our Parks team struggles, they don’t have the equipment to clean graffiti as much,” says RMWB Community Strategies Coordinator Alanna Bottrell.
The RMWB is bringing in experts from across western Canada for TAGS, an anti-graffiti symposium. It includes a high ranking member of the Vancouver police who will talk about what’s working in her community. According the Municipality’s Parks department, it spent $420,376.66 on graffiti removal last year.
The symposium runs from 7 – 9 p.m. Feb. 18 at MacDonald Island Park.
