It was supposed to be a day when the community turned the tables on graffiti vandals who had marred an Arbutus park with paint scrawls.
But civic leaders and police officers were left holding the scrub brushes yesterday -- teen-agers convicted of defacing buildings didn't show up for the cleanup, despite agreeing to the community service sentence to avoid juvenile detention.
"It's very frustrating," said an exasperated Donna Cameron, president of the District One Community Council. "The parents don't take responsibility. All the parents had to do was get the kids here, and they can't even do that."
Yesterday's kickoff of a new program in Baltimore County aimed at forcing graffiti vandals to clean up their own messes wasn't a total loss: Several people worked through the morning scrubbing off the offending marks.
"It's a shame that you can't catch kids and make them clean it all off," said Nancy Cusic, who runs the Arbour Manor Playground for the county. "I'd like to spray-paint them with paint that doesn't come off."
The experience at Arbour Manor Playground demonstrated the difficulties communities have in eradicating the growing phenomenon of "tag-art," in which people paint -- sometimes elaborately -- a code name that can be recognized within the graffiti fraternity.
In downtown Baltimore, the problem has grown so bad that one police commander said going after graffiti vandals is just as important as arresting robbers.
"When you have the mess all over the downtown area, it lets the bad guys think that no one cares," said Maj. Leonard Hamm, who is in charge of the Central District station. "When you have graffiti, lawlessness is not far behind."
The city has just started a program similar to the one in Baltimore County. Two weeks ago, three men 20 to 22 years old -- police said they are former students at the Maryland Institute, College of Art -- pleaded guilty to destruction of property. Each has been sentenced to 33 hours of community service.
The trio was arrested near a bridge in the 1200 block of Mount Royal Ave., near light rail tracks, after officers lay in wait until 1 a.m. Major Hamm said they were caught spray-painting "tags," such as TASK, EARN and RAW, on the side of a bridge abutment.
"They consider themselves artists," the major said. "Their aim is to have their names placed as many places as they can. They think it's funny. They are causing thousands of dollars in property damage."
The city has 10 employees in the Department of Public Works whose sole job is to remove graffiti, at a cost of $50,000 a year -- not including salaries. Since 1989, the Off the Wall Graffiti Removal Team has removed 2 million square feet of paint.
"We get six to eight calls per day requesting graffiti removal," said Vanessa Pyatt, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Public Works.
In Arbutus, Ms. Cameron's District One Community Council has targeted several graffiti-marred areas in the past several weeks, with the help of $12,500 in grant money.
Vandals had hit various places in the park, from a wall lining a basketball court to five picnic tables near a playground and a small building used to store sports equipment.
Multicolored markings covered the sides of the building and the table tops.
Ms. Cameron and county Officers Steven DeBoy and John Sharff, of the Wilkens precinct, used hoses and a cleaning solution called Graffiti Gone that dilutes paint to clean the defaced surfaces.
The paint came off some spots, but stubbornly stuck to the brick -- meaning it may have to be sandblasted.
"This is a culture that all the kids get caught up in," Officer DeBoy said. "They simply have no idea what it takes to remove this stuff. These are just a bunch of bored people who have taken their artistic ability and channeled it the wrong way."
Many of the symbols painted on the tables and walls were the same: "Eyes of the Beholder are everywhere." The tag line "EOB" also appeared frequently.
Police said the youths who failed to appear will be referred back to juvenile court. They had agreed to the community service through negotiations with a Juvenile Arbitration Board and their parents -- a program designed to keep them out of jail.
The sentence calls for community service, but requires only that the specified number of hours be completed by a certain date. Police said they would like to see the youths assigned to a particular project to ensure that episodes such as yesterday's don't recur.
"They could get 20 hours of community service," Officer Sharff said. "They could not show up for this one, and there is nothing we can do."
As the cleanup team wound up its work, Marva Heier finished painting the wall near the basketball court. She has lived in the neighborhood for 31 years and has agreed to patrol the park and erase graffiti as it turns up.
The last time she took her granddaughter to the park, she said, "I had to bring her right back home because the words were so bad."