City offers $500 reward on vandal

Sidney officials are offering a $500 reward for information about the person responsible for producing graffiti on city property at Legion Park in late June.

The graffiti, located in the Fort Sidney Road walking trail tunnel and on the park's flood wall drop structure, has since been painted over.

"We're still wanting the people that are responsible for causing the vandalism to the property," SPD Chief Joe Aikens said. "The city is offering a $500 reward for information leading to their arrest. The people responsible for it need to be held responsible for it."

Producing graffiti on city property is a crime, Aikens affirmed.

"It's disrespectful to people's property," he said. "It's not their property. If the person that did this wants to paint this on the side of his garage, knock yourself out. But if the property belongs to someone else, you don't mark it up."

There have been no further reports of graffiti since June, Aikens said.

"The parks department is still working at cleaning some uptown, but most of it has been cleaned up at this point," he said.

Removing the graffiti is costly.

"The man hours, the cost of the materials, gets pretty expensive," Aikens said. "I'm still waiting for cost estimates from the park on the costs to clean it up."

Such a reward is uncommon for the city, Aikens said.

"We haven't offered that many rewards in the past, but it's probably going to become more commonplace," he said. "With destruction of property like this, we're going to be offering rewards more often."

Aikens reminds citizens that graffiti is a crime than can have serious consequences.

"Don't do it. It's against the law," he said. "It doesn't take long to rack up a lot of dollars worth of damage when you start thinking about having to replace panels because of damage done to them."

To provide information on the person for the responsible for the graffiti that appeared in Legion Park in late June, contact Sidney Police Department at 254-5515, or visit the police station at 1715 Illinois St.