Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

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Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby shibumi » Jul 25, 2008 11:07 am

http://www.tmnews.com/stories/2008/07/2 ... 000945.tms

Last Thursday we caught four trespassers in the act of extensive spraypainting
in Buckner Cave in Indiana. The sheriff was called and cited the trespassers.
The RBNC, Inc, which manages Buckner filed a complaint
against the vandals and yesterday they were fined and have to complete community
service.

This was just sickening when I went on my usual Monday night trip into the cave.
We've spent thousands of man-hours cleaning graffiti and in a few minutes these
a$$holes permanently defaced tens of square feet of recently cleaned walls. It's
going to take dozens of hours to clean it again.

They are *very* lucky that I didn't catch them doing it, they might not have
made it out of the cave without help...

Anmar
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby Scott McCrea » Jul 25, 2008 11:37 am

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Good work, Anmar! I hope their community service time is at least double whatever time it takes to clean the spray paint.
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby NZcaver » Jul 25, 2008 12:40 pm

And I hope their court-ordered community service includes participating in the cleanup themselves... supervised by cavers like Anmar armed with bull whips, of course. :bananawhip: :devil:
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby Steven Johnson » Jul 25, 2008 1:01 pm

Scott McCrea wrote:I hope their community service time is at least double whatever time it takes to clean the spray paint.


Better yet, at least double the time it took the cave to form...

:big grin:
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby Adam Craig » Jul 25, 2008 2:30 pm

It's too bad this sort of thing happened. I've spent my fair share of time in Buckner's running the blaster, hauling gear, etc..., but deep inside I had a feeling it would only be temporarily "clean". The equipment is due back in October, so it's probably not going to get removed unless the RBNC gets an extension. My take??? Put a gate on it, made from the bones of vandals :devil:

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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby shibumi » Jul 25, 2008 2:53 pm

We have actually been very fortunate, there has been little new graffiti since 2002, and several
years we had no new graffiti. We're getting about 2-3 unauthorized visits a month. So while this
one episode is disheartening, it's not a losing battle like it used to be. I made sure we
got a newspaper story about the vandals getting caught and fined, hopefully to scotch further
yahoos. It is too bad we can't put their heads up on pikes at the gate to the property.

We've been discussing gating the cave, but it's a complex issue. It's also in the process of
becoming an NSS preserve, so no action would be done before then.

Anmar, RBNC President.
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby wyandottecaver » Jul 25, 2008 4:48 pm

Maybe a tape player with the recordings of coyote howls, rattle snakes rattling, and collapsing ceilings since I keep hearing that these are the dangers that await anyone foolish enough to enter those dark holes :rofl:
I'm not scared of the dark, it's the things IN the dark that make me nervous. :)
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby hoosiercaver1 » Jul 25, 2008 5:55 pm

NZcaver wrote:And I hope their court-ordered community service includes participating in the cleanup themselves... supervised by cavers like Anmar armed with bull whips, of course. :bananawhip: :devil:


How about intead of whips you use cattle prods!!! I had to see that kind of thing happen after all the hard work put into that caves clean up. I honestly wouldnt want them in there cleaning it up because I dont want anyone in a cave that doesnt respect and love the caves. I hope they never do anything like that again.
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby Ralph E. Powers » Jul 25, 2008 6:58 pm

I'm glad that these guys were caught and that SOME type of justice retribution was meted out. One will hope that they have learned their lesson... but one also fears that they'll be resentful and try to do it again but more carefully, i.e. posting a look-out or something akin to that while they do their dirty deeds.
Or am I being too pessimistic?
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby caveflower » Aug 20, 2008 6:54 am

These kids were doing what kids have been doing in that cave for 50 years. Even though it was wrong maybe they didn't know that NOW its not acceptable behavior. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the stories of Buckner's cave is its a party cave and thats what you do in there. All of us in the caving community know thats not the case anymore but maybe the general public aren't aware of this.
They got what the deserved and I think they should be made to fix what they have messed up. They were tresspassing, defaced the cave cleaning up what they did will make more of an impact on them than sweeping streets. I know if it was my boys that did this thats what I'de do.( P.S. my boys knows better) And hopefully the word will get out that this kind of activity is no longer acceptable.
You never know the guys might learn from it become real cavers and teach others to (take nothing but pictures leave nothing foot prints kill nothing but time)
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby wyandottecaver » Aug 20, 2008 7:22 am

I just had this insane image of teenage neolithic boys finger painting the walls of caves with animals and designs and how they are now world heritage sites and considered valuable "windows" into the culture and climate of the period. Good thing they didn't have good cave ethics or sandblasters then :rofl:
I'm not scared of the dark, it's the things IN the dark that make me nervous. :)
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby Scoon1 » Aug 20, 2008 8:45 am

I think that it would be just punishment to have them participate in the clean-up effort. Don't let them actually clean as they would most likely cause more damage out of spite but there are other duties they could perform with the heavy lifting and hauling. It would also give them a view of what it takes to clean that up and why.

I'm still partial to the Heads on a Pike thing though............
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby cavedoc » Aug 21, 2008 1:38 am

wyandottecaver wrote:I just had this insane image of teenage neolithic boys finger painting the walls of caves with animals and designs and how they are now world heritage sites and considered valuable "windows" into the culture and climate of the period.


I think of the images the teenage boys make with exagerated breasts and genitalia. 10,000 years later they have "obvious ritual significance." They must be doing a lot of spray paint rituals in Buckner's and the alley down the street.
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby shibumi » Aug 21, 2008 7:01 am

cavedoc wrote:
I think of the images the teenage boys make with exagerated breasts and genitalia. 10,000 years later they have "obvious ritual significance." They must be doing a lot of spray paint rituals in Buckner's and the alley down the street.


Actually, I watched the evolution of graffiti in Buckner. A lot of graffiti in the 60s-70s are simple signatures,
mostly smoked in via candle or carbide lamp (lots of NSS #s...). In the late 70s spraypaint became more common and the graffiti became much larger and much more colorful (btw: blue spraypaint is the hardest to remove! It penetrates
the rock much deeper) In the 80s vulgarity was the norm. Then starting sometime about the mid 90s, taggers and the
urban art type graffiti started to appear. These kids we caught had spraypainted a lot of tagging style graffiti,
including one large (5'x6') panel of neolithic style stick figures skateboarding (the kids were skaters). In total,
they put a couple of hundred square feet of graffiti.

And while they were kids just being kids(19-23), and I'm sure that most of us did similarly stupid things when we were
young, kids also need to be made aware that there are consequences to their actions.
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Re: Buckner Cave: Vandals caught and prosecuted

Postby cavedoc » Aug 21, 2008 11:58 am

shibumi wrote: I'm sure that most of us did similarly stupid things when we were
young


I beg your pardon. I did very differently stupid things!
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