How Escondido, CA Eliminated Graffiti with Innovative Technology

Cities across the United States have waged a battle against graffiti vandalism for years with no end in sight. Graffiti is costly, destructive, and negatively impacts the appearance of the community — often indicating criminal street gang activity in the area. The city of Escondido faced a similar issue with city crews working to eradicate over 72,000 tags in 2018 and 2019 alone. The city knew that to take back its precious community from gangs and tagging crews, it had to implement a community-service technology approach that engaged with residents readily.

The city of Escondido established the Graffiti Eradication Program using a brandable mobile app with service request management capabilities. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store branded as “Report It!”, the free and intuitive app allows residents and businesses to report graffiti with a few clicks. The app also can indicate precise locations and even add pictures. After an issue is submitted within the “Report It!” app, a work order is automatically generated within the public works department’s software, Cityworks, which was integrated with Granicus software. With the Cityworks mobile app, crew members receive work orders directly on their mobile devices, instead of being required to come into the office for assignments like they did previously. like they did previously.

Now, the city can identify hotspots with the CRM (constituent relationship manager). City employees can take the collected data to create heatmaps and dashboards to identify trends and target problem areas. These sorts of insights help protect and future-proof an organization by allowing better allocation of city resources.

Quote: “I firmly believe you can’t manage what you don’t measure. The data and reporting we get through the program provide predictive analytics that go far beyond traditional cost-capturing metrics. It also helps us understand trends and characteristics of tagging crews.” — Jake Nyberg, Deputy Director of Public Works

Using technology and cross-departmental collaboration between public works, information systems, and communications, as well as robust community engagement, the city has lowered response times to cover graffiti tags from days to hours, if not minutes. Escondido’s graffiti eradication effort has been tremendously successful and has directly inspired community pride and economic development while also garnering the city a series of prestigious awards.

• ESRI SAG Award: Escondido received the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award from ESRI, the global leader in location intelligence and the “builder” of ArcGIS, the world’s most powerful mapping and spatial analytics software. The city was selected from over 300,000 eligible candidates for its Graffiti Eradication Program’s innovative application of mapping and analytics technology.
• Helen Putnam Award for Excellence: The city of Escondido was recognized by the League of California Cities in the category of public works, infrastructure, and transportation for its unique contributions to community residents and businesses, resulting in lower costs and more effective service delivery.
• Cityworks Excellence in Enterprise Practice Award: Escondido won the Cityworks Excellence in Enterprise Practice Award for having transformed operations and internal management by adopting the Cityworks platform and using it in nearly every department, from public works to utilities.