Police: Red-handed tagger easy to spot

Alleged downtown graffiti artist nabbed with spray cans, red paint all over

Jason Auslander | The New Mexican

2/14/2008 - 2/15/08

Police caught a Valentine's Day vandal red-handed early Thursday morning after a downtown security guard saw him spray-painting a wall.

After the security guard called police about 1 a.m., an officer spotted a man fitting the tagger's description walking downtown and ordered him to stop, according to Deputy Chief Aric Wheeler and a police report. However, the man took off running — ditching a can of spray paint along the way — and was caught about three blocks away on Chapelle Street, he said.

When officers arrested Conrad Crespin, 21, they found two other cans of spray paint on him — one black, one red — and noticed he had red paint all over his hands and shoes, Wheeler said. In addition, Crespin also had a digital camera, which contained photos of additional graffiti, he said.

Crespin was charged with four counts of creating graffiti and two counts of resisting arrest. The graffiti counts are for tags that appeared Wednesday at a First National Bank of Santa Fe building, 122 W. Palace Ave.; the former Palace Restaurant, 142 W. Palace Ave.; Riva Yares Gallery, 123 Grant Ave.; and a "Wrong way" street sign in the 100 block of Sheridan Avenue, Wheeler said.

The tags said either amor libre — "free love" in Spanish — or artone. One of the amor libre tags was written in red paint and surrounded by a red heart, according to police pictures.

Wheeler said Crespin could face additional charges based on the photos in his digital camera.

"We're going to get a detective on this pretty quick and see what (other tags) might be tied to this guy," he said. "I've see (his 'artone' tag) before."

Crespin admitted tagging various walls downtown when he was arrested, according to Wheeler and a police report.

Conrad Crespin was mentioned in the September edition of the Santa Fe Reporter's visual arts listings as being one of four artists involved in a show called "Emergence" at a gallery called Unit D, 2889 Trades West Road. The phone number listed for the gallery was disconnected. A phone call to Crespin's home in the downtown area was not returned.

Larry Brown, an employee at LewAllen Contemporary, 129 W. Palace Ave., said the wall behind the gallery — which runs along an alley where one of the "artone" tags was painted — was tagged three or four times in the last year. He said he didn't recognize the "artone" tag, however.

Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or :jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.