75-12-A6
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Stopping Vandalism
TranscriptSome public officials are banking in a cartoon character and his creator to stop vandalism. I'll be right back. When he discovered that the cost of vandalism to trees had gone from six hundred dollars a year to fifteen hundred dollars in a four-year period, the Park and Recreation Director of the city of Bell, California decided to do something about it. With a population of 21,000 Bell couldn't hire a think tank to ponder the problem or platoons of extra police to scour the streets for vandals, so the Park and Recreation Director called in a friend, an enthusiastic local advertising man named Bill Gray. Gray thought about the problem. He reasoned that most tree vandalism is the work of teenagers and it would be next to impossible to re-educate them, so he decided for long-range results by concentrating instead on younger children from age nine on down to kindergarten. "The program is utterly simple." says Gray, and it works. Within six months, tree vandalism in Bell was down by nearly two-thirds. In fact it worked so well that the nearby city of Carson brought Gray in to do a similar program among its school children, with similar results. Gray uses some old-fashioned child psychology, really common sense, in his approach to the youngsters. He entertains them with slides and the cartoons he draws of Tommy the Tree. He lets them know they're important. He helps them develop a belief that they can do big things about the problem, then he asks them for a commitment to help. Uncle Bill, as he's called by the youngsters to whom he makes his presentations, has become something of a folk hero, a sort of modern Pied Piper as he travels from school to school. One reporter described his presentation as part evangelist and part Bozo the Clown. But the kids come away loving it and him. With his cartoons and slides Bill Gray tells the children the trees are alive just like people and the trees can hurt too. As he ends his animated chalk talk he asked his audience if they'd ever heard a tree, "No!" they'll yell back. "What are you going to do if you ever see someone hurting a tree?" he'll ask. "Tell them to stop!" the kids will reply and apparently that's just what they do, for the sudden and dramatic drop in vandalism in the communities that have used Gray's program can only be explained as influence exerted by the younger children on their older brothers. The city of Carson was so happy about the results of Gray's tree program that had asked him to tackle school vandalism next. Now that's something that's costing taxpayers across America five hundred million dollars a year and Carson isn't immune. So in early June, Gray adapted his tree program to the subject of school vandalism and presented it to more than six thousand delighted kids in the Long Beach Arena. Officials won't know until summer's over how well the program works but they're betting on success and already officials from other cities are beating a path to Uncle Bill Gray's door. Now there's even talk of putting them on television for closed circuit showing in schools far and wide. Amazing isn't it, how a simple program based on the importance of the individual child and on positive values can work wonders. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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