CORDOVA, TN (WMC-TV) - You see it all over Shelby County, in places like dumpsters, walls, and fences: graffiti.
Gary Doughten works in a building surrounded by graffiti.
"It's bad for business," he said.
On a daily basis, Doughten sees the different letters and numbers, patterns and symbols, colors and creations that surround his business, almost a language all to themselves.
"It's just not right," he said.
An Action News 5 photographer woke up Sunday morning to find spray paint in a place he didn't expect - his private property. Graffiti was scrawled across a privacy fence in the back yard of his Cordova home.
Police said the paint was more than an act of vandalism; it was the marking of a Hispanic gang known to be expanding its territory locally. And, officers said, it wasn't the only such call received lately in Cordova.
The Reverend Dwight Montgomery is making a wiping out graffiti his mission, even painting over the same wall twice in the past year.
"An innocent citizen could be caught in the crossfire," he said. "So what do we have to do: Take it all down. Don't have any of it up."
Montgomery said he and the SCLC will be out on Martin Luther King Junior day cleaning up graffiti.
If you find any in your neighborhood, you should call police.
Click here to send an email to Nick Kenney.
Gang graffiti left on a privacy fence in Cordova.
