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Graffiti artists leave their mark at the bottom of the station’s escalators
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Tube graffiti guerrillas leave greetings and a bill
VANDALS taunted the police during a Christmas Day rampage that caused thousands of pounds of damage to Camden Town Tube station.
Daubing “Merry Xmas BTP” on the wall to underline their defiance of British Transport Police, a gang of graffiti artists defaced platforms, electronic noticeboards and escalators in a day-long spree that has baffled investigators trying to determine how they got access to the gated and padlocked station.
BTP chiefs admitted to the New Journal yesterday (Wednesday) that a pre-Christmas campaign to deter the spray-can criminals had backfired.
A spokesman said: “It looks as though the publicity in advance has contributed to an increase over Christmas.
“Although we haven’t had any injuries, which is a positive, this is very disappointing. We’ll need to learn some lessons.”
As news emerged that gangs had targeted up to 70 stations over Christmas, the spokesman denied that the brazen graffiti artists had revealed a weakness in the Underground’s security.
“It is a big, open system, and it is open to this sort of attack,” he said. “People who use the Tube every day can see that. But there are staff at every station during the day, and blanket CCTV coverage. There has to be a balance.”
Investigators were examining CCTV footage to determine how vandals had got into the system, though early evidence suggested they had entered at a vulnerable point some distance from Camden Town and travelled there through the tunnels.
The spokesman said: “The questions are: How did they get in there, and how many were there?”
Police arrested 25 vandals in the run-up to Christmas, he added.
Camden Town was the most spectacular target of the graffiti onslaught, with staff at the station yesterday estimating the damage at tens of thousands.
At Transport for London headquarters, a spokeswoman said a big clean-up would begin last night (Wednesday).
Passengers returning to work had mixed reactions, with some commuters disgusted at the damage or alarmed by the boldness of those targeting the Tube system, and others impressed by the guerrilla-style audacity of the strike.
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