I used to live in Chicago as well and the banning of spray paint sales in the city proper was a brilliant piece of legislation. If only they could do the same for sharpies, at least for people riding the 'El' train. Which leads me to my question, I'm fascinated by the Santiago metro and how the inside of the trains are always tag free. I've been on trains in myriad countries and they always had some sort of graffiti, yet I never see any in the metro trains here. I've seen tags on the walls in the terminals, but not on the actual trains. How does Metro Santiago handle this? And considering their vigilance and success, how can we get them to handle things around the rest of the country??
My tangent (and some advice for Chilean cops maybe): When I lived in New Orleans, there were problems with not just graffiti, but with those low life fratboys who would come to town and urinate everywhere. We're talking in the doorways of shops and restaurants in the French Quarter. It really infuriated those of us who lived and worked there and had to use those doorways. So we had zero problem with the local cops getting creative. For a while, whenever they caught the little sh-ts pissing in public, they would stop them and explain to them about the $500 US fine for urinating in public. Payable immediately or you got sent to the drunk tank and got stuck there until your parents or whoever bailed you out. As you can imagine, most of these stupid kids freaked out at the thought of getting taken in.... this is when the cops would give them an alternative: Take your clothes off and clean up your mess. So alot of them did just that, they took their clothes off and cleaned up their piss. And when the cops said they could go, they would start to walk away with their soggy clothes in hand only to get stopped again. This time with a
"Where do you think you're going like that? There's no walking around neked in this city. Mostly neked, maybe, but don't no one wanna see your skinny, neked, white ass. Put your clothes back on." And they would

They'd walk all the way back to their hotels in their piss-soaked clothes. Good times.
Makes me wish the cops would do something about the amount of men who like to whip out in front of anyone, at anytime and pee all over the place. I have no problem with the stray dogs peeing everywhere, it doesn't stink the way drunken man pee stinks. I never thought much about it here, since I grew up seeing it. Wasn't a fan, but just chalked it up to the culture and bad breeding, just like the American Fratboys. But my boyfriend who's Canadian finds it particularly revolting. He's the first to admit, sometimes, well sometimes there are extenuating circumstances and when you've gotta go, you've gotta go. But here in Chile, it seems as if life is one long extenuating circumstance. We see men peeing against buildings a few times a week. And if He-who-can-stand-up-to-pee also finds it gross, then I am vindicated!
Anyhow, if the cops can't get a handle on the graffiti, then I somehow doubt the public urination issue is even on their radar...