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Effort to Clean Up Downtown Galesburg Continues
The head of the Galesburg Downtown Council says Knox College has been a huge help in cleaning up downtown Galesburg.

Council president John Schlaf says student Josh Tatro, as part of an internship with the Midwest Center for Educational Initiatives, ended up documenting four-hundred different incidents of graffiti in the downtown area, which he then placed on an interactive map.

Schlaf tells the WGIL Morning News incidents of graffiti, the way he sees it, kind of ebb and flow.

"Unfortunately this is one of those times where it was really flowing," Schlaf said. "We had talked about it in one of our recent meetings and so we got together with Josh and put together a group of volunteers-- that included members form that team, Knox, Galesburg Community Foundation, Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Council-- and started to go after the graffiti."

Schlaf, a former Galesburg Police Chief and current head of Knox College security, says the Downtown Council has had a great interest in graffiti and getting rid of it for a long time, but it's the first time in his memory it's been tackled in quite this way.

He says he's very comfortable in saying that the greatest majority of the graffiti has been cleaned up. Schlaf praised local police in the efforts of two people accused of committing two-dozen acts of graffiti themselves.
05 18 12 by Newsroom
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