Swampscott dealing with graffiti issues; numerous incidents reported recently at middle school

SWAMPSCOTT-Swastikas and the word “anarchy” are just a couple of the graffiti tags found in the middle school recently.School Resource Office Detective Rose Cheever said graffiti at the middle school is on the rise.”It’s becoming almost a daily thing at the middle school,” she said. “Graffiti was never really an issue at the middle school. It’s becoming a lot more frequent and I’m not sure why.”Cheever said the majority of the graffiti at the middle school is found in the bathrooms, which makes it difficult to catch the vandals.”We can’t put cameras in there due to privacy issues and we can’t close off the bathrooms,” she said. “We don’t have a staff member available who can sit in the bathrooms all day and act as a monitor.”Cheever said all the graffiti found in the middle school was written with black indelible markers.”It can’t be removed,” she said. “It has to be painted over.”Graffiti is not only a problem at the middle school. Cheever said there are several other areas in town that have been hard hit by graffiti artists recently, including the area around the MBTA Commuter Rail Station, the brown USPS collection boxes on Berkshire Street and the area behind Fiory’s Market.