The UW Police had their hands full this week as several artistic individuals decided to use the infrastructure on and around campus to display their spray-painting talents.

Taggers left their mark on Kane Hall and on the sidewalk in front of the Henry Art Gallery on Jan. 14. On Jan. 17, yet another incident of amateur artistic expression was found on the side of the Safeco Towers. The following day, someone tagged a window at McCarty Hall. This individual evidently had a message for passersby.

“Someone wrote ‘we’re watching you,’ and drew a phallus,” UWPD detective Allen Beard said. So far, no arrests have been made, meaning the spray-painting vandals remain at large.

In other vandalism news, an aluminium sign was stolen from in front of Publications Services on the 3900 block on Jan. 14.

“That was odd,” Beard said. “Presumably it was stolen for scrap metal.”

In drug-related news, yet another student was caught smoking marijuana in the resident halls on Jan. 15.

“We got a call saying that there was the smell of burning marijuana coming from a room in Terry Hall,” Beard said.

Police answered the call and discovered that the student was in possession of fewer than 40 grams, so the student was not arrested.

Since the passage of Seattle’s Initiative 75 in 2003, possession of fewer than 40 grams of marijuana by an adult has been made Seattle-area police’s lowest law enforcement priority. The student instead received a citation and the marijuana was confiscated.

On Jan. 14, another vehicle was stolen from the UW campus. This one was a 1987 Toyota Camry, which disappeared from the E-12 parking lot.

“People wonder why it’s the older Japanese cars that always get stolen,” Beard said. “They say, ‘Why would thieves want that piece of junk?’ ­— not to say that this particular Camry was a piece of junk. Thieves go after these cars because the tumblers in the locks get worn down after years. So they become vulnerable to somebody breaking in with a shaved key.”

Beard explained that older cars, particularly the less-expensive Japanese models, are easy targets because they’re easy to get into, which makes them appealing to thieves who want them for transportation, rather than for selling the vehicles for parts.

“They’re not taking them to the chop shops,” Beard said. “That’s why we are able to recover so many stolen cars around here.”

[Reach columnist Siv Prince at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]