A GRIFFITH policeman stood idly by while a Leeton skateboarder helped local kids heavily graffiti a prominent Olympic Street building on Saturday morning.
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Instead of being alarmed, PCYC policeman Alex Davies was in fact thrilled to host Totem Skate School's graphic designer Joel Cameron all the way from Sydney to help 10 talented young artists express themselves in the form of a mural.
Senior Constable Davies has been running a program allowing young locals who have an interest in graffiti to develop their artistic skills in a legal setting.
"The program has been a real success, we've had around 10 kids coming every week since the start of this term and on Saturday the graphic artist Nigel Cameron was able to help us with a mural and we ended up with a great piece of art," he said.
"Nigel was able to show the kids techniques like blending and how to overlay, where you start with a dark background colour and work your way forward with lighter colours.
"The kids were able to add their own parts to the murals and while the instructor gave them ideas, the kids came up with things like calling Griffith G-town as well as writing their name on the art."
Senior Constable Davies said similar programs had been shown to reduce the incidence of graffiti, but the program had to remain ongoing.
"I'm not too sure if we'll do it next term, although I would like to," he said.
"While the program's still running it will reduce the rate of graffiti, but when it's not running it won't."
"With what we're doing, the kids have the ability to do it legally, the right way."