A spray-paint-wielding vandal has become so prolific, Prince George RCMP have put out an alert asking the public to keep an eye out for the culprit.
The suspect, who goes by the tag "FAKS," has left 120 marks on 50 spots around the city, wreaking more than $100,000 worth of damage.
And the culprit, who police believe is a male between 15 and 30 years old, has targeted more than just back alleys and abandoned buildings.
One of the more egregious examples is an apartment building near 17th and Winnipeg.
A few weeks ago, its bare brick surface was hit with the tag, measuring about five feet across and which spilled over onto a window of one of the apartment's units.
"How do you get that off?" said Prince George RCMP Cpl. Craig Douglass during a press conference at the detachment on Wednesday. "You can't just paint over it without painting the whole building.This is where the value of the damage goes up.
"It's not just a matter of a can of paint and a roller. We're talking about significant spending."
Other targets include residential fences, a city-owned sign at the Massey Drive skate park and the back of Connaught Youth Centre at Victoria Street and 17th Avenue, which has been hit three times.
Almost all of the sites are in the Bowl, leading police to believe the culprit lives in the area and does not own a vehicle.
According to a past sighting, he wears a hoodie, carries a backpack and indications are he is almost never alone.
"He's got two or three acquaintances that he goes out with from time to time," said Douglass, who has been documenting the instances.
"I've rarely seen any of his stuff without another tagger next to him."
The tag TYA often accompanies their marks, Douglass added.
These taggers are not artists and have been simply leaving their marks wherever they can.
"They go through a growth," Douglass said. "They start out where there's very, very little chance of being detected and practice essentially.
"They get more and more brazen to the point where (they strike) more obvious locations."
Douglass said they appear to be motivated by the thrill and attention.
"They're all about getting their name out there, all about being 'the king' and getting recognition," Douglass said, adding research has shown a lot of taggers have a mental health issue such as obsessive compulsive disorder.
Prince George Crime Stoppers is providing a special award consideration for any information that will lead to an arrest.
Those who work at night - taxi drivers, security workers, paramedics, truck drivers - are asked to "pay extra attention to the dark shadows, the blank walls."
"If people are hanging around where they shouldn't be, give us a call," Douglass said.
"It's what we do, we want to check those people to make sure that they are doing what they should be doing, especially at those hours of the morning."
It's also believed they shoplift their paint.
"This is not cheap paint they're using," Douglass said. "I have a hard time believing they could afford it."
He added that retailers can refuse to sell an item to a customer they suspect will be using it for illegal means. One telltale sign a customer might be a tagger is paint on his hands, Douglass said.
Another prolific tagger has recently gone through the restorative justice program, an alternative to the traditional court system that allows the guilty person to make amends while avoiding a criminal record.
He was ordered to remove all the tags he was responsible for.
It's unlikely FAKS will be given the option of going through the program, Douglass said. Instead, he'll likely be charged with mischief causing damage to property for each tag.
The maximum penalty is two years in jail for an act that causes $5,000 or less in damage and 10 years for those that exceed that level.
In all, police have logged 1,200 tags at 200 locations, adding up to more than $500,000 in damage, since July 2014.
Anyone with information about the offences is asked to call the Prince George RCMP at 250-561-3300 or anonymously contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), online at www.pgcrimestoppers.bc.ca, or Text-A-Tip to CRIMES using keyword "pgtips."
