Kenneth Ellis is genuinely sorry for the Hampden houses he illegally decorated with spray paint.
Ellis, 25, in fact apologized to the whole city Tuesday morning in Baltimore Circuit Court, when he pleaded guilty to throwing his notorious graffiti tag “Oricl” up last fall on city walls, gates and utility boxes.
He said outside the courtroom it was particularly the homeowners ? working folks ? he felt bad about.
Not that he?s ditching graffiti just yet.
“Oricl, I guess, is dead … so whatever,” Ellis said.
He was sentenced to 18 months probation and 500 hours community service, which he?s supposed to spend cleaning graffiti.
He called scrubbing away tags the biggest punishment of all.
“I?m going to cry,” he said.
A city official said he was pleased with the sentence, but doubted anything less than jail time would have much impact on other graffiti artists.
“He took the fall for them. He did,” said Charles McMillion, an assistant chief in the Department of Public Works.
Catching graffiti artists is like a game of cat and mouse, he said. As soon as officials get someone, new, taunting graffiti goes up with dates and messages like “Catch us if you can.”
Ellis pleaded guilty to several counts of property destruction despite weaknesses in the state?s case, including video footage taken from a city surveillance camera that was initially believed to identify him spray painting downtown.
A spokeswoman for the State?s Attorney?s Office said the surveillance video was of poor quality so it wasn?t useful to prosecutors.
Ellis said he knew the video couldn?t definitively incriminate him, but he took the guilty plea anyway because the state had informants willing to testify against him.
Ellis reminisced outside the courthouse about his rise in Baltimore?s graffiti subculture, the rush of going out spray painting and the triumph of being one of the most prolific writers in the area. He came up with “Oricl” as a teenager, he said.
“It?s a kind of cool word,” he said.
“Graffiti is about the love of getting up,” Ellis said, explaining that he was so obsessive about tagging that he hated realizing he?d missed a block after hitting a neighborhood. “I love Charles Village. I love Mount Vernon … Anywhere on Howard Street is money.”
Other artists have steered clear of him since his arrest, Ellis said, but all his punishment will really do is satisfy the city and the public for a while.
In the graffiti community, he said, “nobody?s worried about it.”
