Police arrest suspect after graffiti spree hit 28 downtown buildings

Police arrested a Lawrence man after a graffiti spree left at least 28 downtown buildings spray-painted, forcing merchants and property owners along Massachusetts Street to face a cleanup job that could ripple through the city’s busiest commercial corridor.

An officer first spotted a man spray-painting the message CHESA! on a building in the 600 block of Massachusetts Street on Sunday night, then watched him run into the crowd in front of Logie’s bar. Police later found him spraying another building in the 800 block of Massachusetts Street, the kind of fast-moving vandalism that can spread across multiple facades before anyone realizes how much damage has been done.

The Douglas County Jail booking log identified the suspect as Anthony Delprete, 37, of Lawrence. The log showed he was arrested on suspicion of 28 counts of criminal damage to property. Police said Delprete told officers that activists from a Facebook page had paid him virtually to do it and that he had never met them. The investigation remained ongoing, and officers were still trying to identify every affected business and create separate cases tied to the damage.

For downtown, the scale matters. Massachusetts Street is the heart of the district, where storefront appearance, foot traffic and first impressions help drive business. One night of tagging can mean immediate cleanup bills for tenants and building owners, plus the added cost of restoring brick, glass or historic facades if paint soaks in or surfaces are damaged during removal. The city says graffiti can hurt business districts and neighborhoods, reduce property values and business growth, and discourage tourism.

Lawrence has built a response around quick removal. The city says rapid and continual cleanup helps preserve community image and a sense of security, and its Downtown Ambassador Program removes trash, cleans parking lots and paints over crude graffiti on city property. City figures show the program removed more than 1,000 graffiti tags in 2024 alone, a sign of how much time and labor downtown maintenance can require even before a spree of this size.

Downtown Lawrence Inc., the membership organization created in 1972 to promote the interests of the downtown business district, represents the merchants and property owners most exposed to the cost of a mass tagging incident. Similar graffiti cases have surfaced in downtown Lawrence before, but the broad reach of this one, and the number of buildings hit, made it a significant hit to the district’s appearance and its day-to-day business environment.