Vandal Squad The Book

I'm really looking forward to having a read of the memoirs of Joseph Rivera, who joined the New York City Transit Police Department in 1984, and was assigned to the elite Transit Squad in 1987. Rivera became the lead investigator of the Graffiti Habitual Offender Suppression Team (G.H.O.S.T.) within the Vandal Squad in 1998.

An excerpt from the book:

"MENOS"
"We first became interested in MENOS after he went All
City. He was hitting all over the place but didn’t
dabble with the Subway. He was a street bomber and
also did a lot of Amtrak, Metro North, and Long Island
Railroad. We had a lot of connections with cops
covering those trains and they were constantly calling
us to ask, “Hey, you know who this guy is?” We saw
that he was getting big and decided to find out who
the hell he was. He was another one that was hard to
find because he had no permanent residence and was out
there bouncing around.



After several months we caught a break at a graffiti
exhibition in lower Manhattan. I was on the roof of a
three-story brownstone with binoculars. It was a
beautiful night. Half of them were gathered outside,
just hanging out, flipping through their photos, the
usual. Then one of the guys pulled out a can of spray
paint and tagged the sidewalk. When several spectators
moved out of the way I could read the tag: MENOS.

I called down on the radio and gave them a
description. Turned out MENOS was with FREE 5 and OVAL
and a couple of other guys from the KGK crew. Then
MENOS started walking towards FREE 5’s van like he was
going to leave, so I ran down the stairs in case my
guys on the street didn’t grab him. As I was coming
down, I radioed to them, “There’s a guy videotaping
the whole thing. Get the tape! Get the guy with the
camcorder. We want to talk to him.” When I got down,
MENOS was cuffed but the van and the guy with the
camcorder were gone. But they did grab OVAL for
slapping stickers on a mailbox down the block as he
walked away from the party.

“Hey, you’re Joe Blow! How you doing?” MENOS said. “I
ain’t telling you shit!”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “We’re going to
lock you up again. Trust me, we’re going to get you.”



As soon as he got out, he was tagging all over the
City again. He was everywhere and he didn’t stop.
Several uniform cops locked him up for hitting trucks
in a parking lot down by the Williamsburg Bridge. He
had a camera on him. I got a Search Warrant for the
camera, developed the film, and there were pictures of
MENOS bombing all over the City alongside other
vandals. With the evidence to charge him in Brooklyn,
the Bronx, and Manhattan, we gave MENOS the grand tour
of the New York City Booking facilities.

When he was arrested, he didn’t make bail and was sent
to Rikers Island. I talked to the DA’s office in each
borough where he had open complaints, and had the ADAs
draw up a “take out order.” It’s like a menu: we’d
fill out some paperwork, and take the guy out of jail.
Wearing his orange suit and his little yellow
sneakers, MENOS was brought in for charges in each
borough. I did this three times in three different
boroughs. He was in for a good three months. When he
saw us show up with the take-out order in our hand, he
got depressed. After our third visit, he said, “I
really don’t like you guys. One was okay. One was
pretty funny. But now I can’t take it anymore.”

“Hey listen,” I told him, “We can’t find you. You
don’t go to court when you’re supposed to. You’re out
there bombing and you don’t care. What else am I going
to do? I told you we would get you!”



A couple of weeks later we got a call from the CSX
Police Department in Florida, which covers the CSX
freight trains throughout the country. A few Officers
arrested three individuals for spray painting and
conducted a Search Warrant in Florida where they
recovered this tape. It had footage of MENOS spray
painting in New York City. The next day, there was a
FedEx guy at the door of the Vandal Squad office
handing us the freakin’ tape. MENOS was still being
held at Rikers pending trial, which gave us time to
track down complaints. Once again, we re-arrested him
at Rikers. I heard he got a few months and never ran
into MENOS again."




[VIA] & {VIA}