Graffiti Suspect Fails Inkblot Test ‘Karma’ May Have Caught Up With Suspect Of Vandalism

Mark Anthony Cameron got caught green-handed.

The 22-year-old Spokane man was arrested early Friday on malicious mischief charges after a security guard spotted someone scribbling on downtown buildings.

Police said Cameron left his mark - in green and purple - on 37 businesses spanning seven blocks. Two permanent markers of the same color were found in Cameron’s pockets when police stopped him in an alley near Riverside and Wall about 2:30 a.m.

The ink had stained his hands and fingers, but Cameron denied he was the vandal. He told police he was holding the markers for his girlfriend.

Cameron, who was still in the Spokane County Jail on Friday evening, “probably faces felony charges,” said police spokesman Dick Cottam. “The damage is well over $250.”

A janitor at Sterling Savings, 111 N. Wall, estimated one spot of graffiti at the bank would cost more than $350 to clean up.

Purple and green streaks of marker had soaked into the inlaid stone sidewalk at the bank entrance and would have to be sandblasted, he told police.

The damage trailed along the alley between Riverside and Main, extending from Brown to Wall. Many of the businesses hit with a fresh coat of purple or green were vacant and already covered with graffiti.

A mechanical arm at the entrance to a parking lot at The Onion on Riverside was hit with the vandal’s favorite slogan: “Karma 95.” Police believe the words represent the vandal’s street name.

It showed up more than two dozen times in the alley - on no-parking signs, pillars, guardrails, back doors, gutters and windowsills.

The city does not have money budgeted for cleaning up graffiti on public property, said Bruce Steele, a traffic department engineer.

His unit and the parks department usually share responsibility in removing graffiti, using money that’s been budgeted for something else, he said.

“We try to remove it as quickly as possible, especially when there’s bad language,” Steele said. “It’s just another one of those things we just have to keep up with.”