Taggers have gone on a spray- painting rampage in the Tau ranga suburb of Welcome Bay _ spraying everything from fences to parked cars.
Police are still investigating the vandalism in Victory St and Osprey Drive to determine how many properties were hit overnight on Tuesday.
Police were out in force in the area yesterday photo graphing the tags and Tau ranga City Council officers attempted to clean some tags off properties.
The tagging in Victory St appeared to have been cleaned up when the Bay of Plenty Times visited today, but large tags created with green spray paint remained outside proper ties in Osprey Drive.
Jean Walters' fence was tagged for the first time since it was erected six years ago. She was waiting on council officers today to waterblast the tagging off.
Across the road, another neighbour who did not wish to be named, said she was ``horri fied' at what had happened.
Her fence and an outside sign had been tagged _ also for the first time.
``That they could be so blatant and come along in the middle of the night and do things to you while you are are asleep ... It makes me feel uneasy,' she said.
Another resident of Osprey Drive, Brooke Kim, had both her garage door and the brick surrounding it tagged.
She moved to New Zealand 18 months ago from Korea with her husband Kevin Song and two children aged 10 and 7, expecting it to be a safe country.
``Last night I was a little scared in here ... I don't think it's very safe anymore,' she said.
A fourth Osprey Drive resi dent, who had her fence tagged and also did not wish to be named, said safety concerns were mounting in the commun ity.
Tauranga Police Sergeant Nga Utanga said a local resi dent saw youths tagging a truck and called police. How ever, patrols were unable to find their car, which is described as a dark-coloured two-door Honda Ascot. Wit nesses are asked to call Tau ranga police on 577-4300.
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