Over time, workers from Bethesda Urban Partnership (BUP) saw more and more graffiti around town, on buildings, in alleyways, on signs.
Dave Dabney, the executive director of BUP, said it became clear it was the work of one person. “It got to the point where he must have walked up Arlington Road and tagged everything along the way.”
“Starting in about mid-April of this year, continuing into the early part of August, several commercial establishments in the Central Business District, county parking garages, signs and other buildings were vandalized,” said Detective Britta Thomas of the Montgomery County Police Department, who investigated the case.
It turns out that the graffiti was the work of a 14-year-old, tracked down by police, with help from BUP. On August 14, police arrested the boy at his Bethesda home and charged him with 15 counts of vandalism.
In total, Dabney said that more than 100 tags were painted or stickered in Bethesda, promoting what the youth described as a “cult” in YouTube videos he posted.
Since his arrest, the 14-year-old has been going around town with his father erasing his handiwork, Dabney said.
But the tag can still be found—there’s one in an alley behind the public parking garage between Woodmont Avenue and Old Georgetown Road. Another is scrawled on an air conditioning unit on top of a building across from Imagination Stage.
Dabney said the juvenile asked him if he could have his own wall in Bethesda to spray paint. “I told him it’s not art, it’s vandalism,” Dabney said. “In no place does it have a place.”
