A Queens man was arrested for tagging restaurants he thought ripped him off, not to mention tagging a number of other pieces of public property. The Post reports the police confrontation with 29 year-old Michael Camacho, whose tag was "VAMP":
When detectives from the 112th Precinct arrested him at his Yellowstone Boulevard home Tuesday and showed him 100 photos of evidence, Camacho begged for copies.
"He was pretty impressed with his work," said Lt. Thomas Comforti of the precinct's special-ops unit. "He asked for copies. We respectfully declined the opportunity."
While he would target the pizza place he thought was bad and the Chinese restaurant that would overcharge him, Camacho would also tag anything that seemed ripe for it, running with his crew, WRB (We Represent Beef), made up of an 18 year-old (tag: CORE) and a 15 year-old (tag: NEPS), and the police did say, "One of the weirdest things about this investigation was this guy was an adult." The police had also thought that Camacho was referring to vampires with his tag, but the police got an explanation: "He corrected us. He said he meant the word as a burst of energy, that 'vamps out' when he gets in the mood." Dude, "vamping out" is totally about vampires - Gothamist has watched Buffy and Angel. Camacho faces a $1,000 fine and possible jail time.
Gothamist is a little more than suspicious about the timing of this graffiti arrest, a week after Mayor Bloomberg's announced crackdown on graffiti vandalism, so we'll be ready for any further graf-related announcements. And we liked how the Post referred to Taki 183 (in that Camacho was no Taki 183) in their article.
