Street artist suspected of spray-painting distinctive tag over 40 times around Arizona city arrested after allegedly being caught red-handed.
A high-profile example of the graffiti tag at Tempe City Hall(Penis Man Fans/Twitter)
Tempe in Arizona may take its name from the ancient Greek valley famed as the haunt of the poetry god Apollo and his learned Muses, but it seems not everyone in the city is appreciative of creative endeavour.
When the words “Penis Man” began appearing in spray paint around Tempe in November last year, certainly some rallied to the lofty cause as admirers and supporters.
“Penis Man” soon became a cult figure, inspiring a “Penis Man Fans” Twitter account (now with over 270 followers) to document new displays of the tag in and around the city.
Even authorities were willing to turn a blind eye for a while, with the street artist’s sum total of 40-odd efforts a drop in the ocean compared to the 300,000 cases of graffiti recorded in the city last year.
Patience wore thin, however, when “Penis Man” began exhibiting his handiwork on local historical landmarks, including the Hayden Flour Mill, the “A” landmark on Hayden Butte, and the front door of Tempe’s municipal building.
With the subsequent investigation brought to a head, “Penis Man” may now be definitively shafted, as authorities claim they have their man.
Police arrested 38-year-old Dustin Shomer, a resident of nearby Phoenix and a former student of Arizona State University, which has a campus in Tempe, after he was allegedly caught in the act on Thursday, the Arizona Republic reports.
Shomer claimed in a Facebook post that the graffiti was motivated by a socio-political agenda.
“LGBTQ+ is a function of capitalist identity politics,” he asserted. “Although anyone should be free to be who they are, they should not need a particular label in order to achieve validity in their sexuality or orientation.”
Yet if there are acolytes waiting in the wings to pick up the baton of “Penis Man”, they might be put off by the alleged heavy-handed nature of their leader’s arrest.
“They raided my condo and vehicle and swarmed my entire complex in west Phoenix with 25 heavily armed SWAT officers, and pointed a silenced assault rifle in my face,” Shomer wrote on Facebook.
“Anyone with any doubt who the bad guys are here … be certain it is the City of Tempe, City of Phoenix, and police forces valleywide. There is no excuse for pointing an AR-15 in the face of a non-violent offender,” he added.
Shomer was booked into the Tempe City Jail on several counts of criminal damage and a single count of criminal trespassing in the first degree.
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Funny how this guy vandalizes a load of municipal property with some moronic tag and then tries to make out it has some kind of deeper political meaning. But if that really is how they came to arrest him that seems way OTT!