Sudbury's Bell Park hit by vandals with spray paint

City of Greater Sudbury workers spent the past few days cleaning up unsightly graffiti in Bell Park, after several benches, railings, signage and a rock face were marked up with spray paint on Sunday night.

An inspector with Sudbury police said he couldn't talk specifically about this investigation, but said community response officers are compiling images to cross reference with other cases.

"We're currently in the process of developing a graffiti strategy and that graffiti strategy is going to basically incorporate education, eradication and enforcement," Michael Chapman said.

"Components of that are going to be launched at the end of police week and then we'll be working further with that and we've been in contact with the city to assist us."

WARNING: Explicit language in one photo

Stiff penalties for graffiti: police

Since the vandalism happened within a municipal park, staff with park services are responsible for the clean-up.

That takes city workers away from other important work, says Pam Cranston, manager of Park Services for the city.

"When something like this occurs, we have to take all our resources and put that effort into removing the graffiti right away," she said.

"[That] takes away from our other duties to try and get parks cleaned up for the summer. So it certainly has a negative impact on our operations and the tasks that we already have scheduled."

The city department that responds to graffiti on municipal property depends on where the vandalism took place. For example, because this incident was in a municipal park, the leisure services did the clean-up. Roads crews would clean-up graffiti on street signs.

Police say the charge for graffiti is mischief and penalties could be up to 10 years in jail.