Los Angeles police arrested two people this week in connection with a spate of graffiti on nearly 30 floors of an unoccupied and unfinished downtown skyscraper.
The tagging stretches across a large portion of a tower in the $1bn Oceanwide Plaza, a stalled mixed-use retail and residential project that has sat unfinished since 2019. The site is located just across from the Crypto.com Arena, where this year’s Grammy awards will be held on Sunday.
People reportedly witnessed vandalism at the site over several nights this week.
“I could see people up on the balcony were tagging and everything,” Daron Burgundy, a street photographer, told KTLA. “Last night there was a crew on one of the floors and people were coming out and getting detained by LAPD and getting cited and released. People were still in there tagging while the cops were down here.”
The Los Angeles police department said in a statement that its air support division spotted more than a dozen people trespassing in the building after midnight on 30 January and “possibly spray-painting”. The group fled by the time officers reached the area, except for two people who police arrested on a trespassing charge.
Days later officers responded to a vandalism call for people reportedly spray-painting on the building’s 30th floor. They fled when law enforcement arrived. That call ultimately resulted in a traffic citation.
Detectives are continuing to investigate in hopes of making arrests, according to an LAPD statement.
The police department said officers were working with Oceanwide Plaza management to better secure the site and put additional security measures in place.
“The measures will be implemented immediately and the graffiti will be removed,” the LAPD said.
Construction on Oceanwide Plaza, which was set to be the city’s tallest residential tower, began in 2015. The project, described by its creator as LA’s “most anticipated mixed-use development”, would have brought more than 500 high-end condos, a Park Hyatt hotel, and retail and restaurant spaces.
But by 2019, construction had come to a stop after the project’s Beijing-based developer ran out of funding to finish it.
