Ottawa Street has a graffiti problem

Two days after the Locke Street riot, businesses on Ottawa Street North were targeted by vandals who damaged property and graffitied the area.

Vandalism on Ottawa Street North has become a norm to some business owners, experiencing it several times over the last few months. On Monday night, one man with cans of spray paint took a walk down the street tagging everything in sight.

Monday shortly after 11 PM, a man appears on Ottawa Street North carrying a plastic bag.

He ditches his crutches, and is seen tagging a store front with spray paint.

After more than 10 minutes, he starts walking away, but before he takes off, he scans the area, and tags a city garbage bin.

Beverly Johnson owns the Bra Makers Supply Shop and attacks on her store are not new.

As soon as the man in the video would see a pedestrian coming or a car driving by he would hide out in between these two businesses and as you can see there’s more graffiti in the same colour spray paint.

Sean Queroub used his cameras to catch this man’s illegal acts but he’s uncertain the police will do anything about the crime.

“Sometimes it takes weeks for somebody to come out to take a report, other times nothing.” He says.

Sean is a landlord and his buildings have been tagged in the past. His cameras have captured the vandals responsible, but no arrests were ever made.

Something the Ottawa Street B.I.A. is also calling for because they say there’s been 19 acts of vandalism in the past 4 months on the street.

While Beverly Johnson says she reported the crime that happened on Monday, Hamilton Police say at this time, “We have found no record of acts of vandalism in the Ottawa Street area”.

Hamilton Police says they take these types of crimes very seriously and strongly encourage anyone who has been directly affected to report the matter to police as soon as possible so they can investigate it to the fullest.