Alderman Orders Mural With Police Imagery Painted Over (VIDEO)

A provocative and apparently legal Bridgeport mural depicting police surveillance boxes was painted over Friday by order of Ald. Jim Balcer (11th), NBC Chicago reports.

Artist Gabriel Villa painted an image of three police surveillance boxes adorned with a deer head, a human skull and Christ on the cross on the wall of a neighborhood tavern and liquor store near 31st and Morgan at the request of a local gallery owner.

"I wanted to create something that was urban ... something that we see in a lot of marginalized neighborhoods, like the surveillance camera," Villa told NBC Chicago.

The work was commissioned as part of a local art festival and appeared on private property, on a wall owned by a relative of a festival organizer, Chicago Public Radio reports.

Balcer told Chicago Public Radio that he had the city's graffiti blasters paint over the mural because the building owner lacked the proper permits and he had received complaints, including from police, about potentially "anti-police" or gang-related imagery.

A spokesman for the city's buildings department told Chicago Public Radio's Rob Wildeboer that a permit is not required "for a mural on the side of a private building as long as it's not an advertisement and as long as the property owner has given their permission."

Watch the mural being painted over:

Watch an interview with the artist:

Look at before and after photos on the WBEZ blog.

Comments

[gangwayjan]

09:20 PM on 05/18/2009

Balcer (the Alderman in question) is no Daley. This was not the smartest move and I'll bet $ he will pay for in in some kind of currency.

[petphotos]

04:06 PM on 05/17/2009

Sure sounds like a lawsuit in the making. Of course taking on city government is always a challenge, even if you are in the right. They have ways to get back at you.

[wwwFIXNEWSNOWorg]

03:55 PM on 05/17/2009

I guess what we're saying is that the offended parties should erect a webpage that permanently records the deed as a monument to the injustice.

[wwwFIXNEWSNOWorg]

03:52 PM on 05/17/2009

http://SaveSkate22.org is a website that was set up to check the power of the local officials and media who tried to strong arm a local business, shuttering them for four months.

In the end the petty public officials lost. The website was sponsored by http://CeaseSPIN.org and http://GoodCheapFast.com

The community used the website to fight back and won the reopening of the skating rink two weeks ago.

We hope this encourages folks out there to organize and fight back against these petty power mongering public officials.

[meade]

03:47 AM on 05/17/2009

The alderman is simply taking his cues from mayor Daley (remember Meigs Field?). Why bother with something as inconvenient as the law and private property rights. The alderman and some cops were bothered by the mural, so it had to go. Simple as that.

[underthegun1]

03:31 AM on 05/17/2009

So, how could they paint over it if "for a mural on the side of a private building as long as it's not an advertisement and as long as the property owner has given their permission."

Did the owner give permission? Was there any fight to keep the mural on the wall?

Horrible writing.

[humble liberty]

02:21 AM on 05/17/2009

Whitewash over racial profiling, they'll say. How about white out on needless sentences for carrying some weed? Wall street does worse every day.

How about they use this squelching money for paint and labor and pay some teachers, update some textbooks or other books?

[avocado]

10:15 PM on 05/16/2009

typical, dictatorship of chicago