Talk to Noah Fritz about the most minuscule of spray-painted initials on a garbage lid and he begins the psychological breakdown of what it all means.

“This to me is the equivalent of a vanity plate,” said the criminology professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver, clicking through a graffiti slide show that his students put together on his computer. “What are they trying to tell us? What is the essence of this?”

Fritz and his students have spent a year studying and mapping graffiti in 180 census blocks throughout the city. They hope to see if there is any correlation between graffiti and street crime, and whether simply painting over the marks is an effective way to counter it.

Denver will spend $1.2 million in 2008 on graffiti removal, and officials say they will step up efforts downtown to remove graffiti in preparation for 50,000 visitors coming for the Democratic National Convention.

Fritz, a former crime analyst at an Arizona police department, will be the first one to say he doesn’t have all the answers.

He knows that graffiti in Denver runs the gamut from obvious gang communication to the artful mural on the back of the garage. He knows that graffiti here, and probably nationally, is largely misunderstood and that painting over it sometimes dares the taggers into a cat-and-mouse game.

What he hopes to probe — with the help of his criminology students — is: how graffiti in a neighborhood correlates to crime (he’ll layer graffiti-defacing maps over crime data); why do kids do it (he’ll interview 18-year-olds who may know taggers and compile personal stories) and whether there’s anything the city can do about it (a communal graffiti wall? A celebration of graffiti as art?) that would deter taggers from defacing private property.

Last fall, about 25 Metro students walked the perimeters of the census blocks included in the project, taking pictures of everything, even the smallest of graffiti scratches.

They found more than 1,000 scrawlings, drawings and murals.

It was quite the project, Fritz said, but one that was wholeheartedly embraced.

“In case they didn’t want to do it, I gave them the option of writing a paper,” he said. “Everyone wanted to do this.”

The students picked the blocks scientifically and are taking the summer and most of next school year to analyze the types of graffiti. Then they will look at possible crime correlations.

Fritz also wants to see whether the graffiti elimination project underway is working.

Most of the mapping research was completed in October. Fritz wants to see whether this October there are fewer marks.

“I think it’s important, when a government entity puts resources into a project, to see if their strategies are effective,” Fritz said. “We always try to be more efficient, but we should be thinking more about whether they are effective.”

Mike Allard said he thinks he has found one solution.

The manager of Headed West, a tobacco shop on South Broadway, battled the “gangbangers in Englewood” for months as they tagged the sides of his store. Businesses are fined if they don’t paint or wash over graffiti in three days.

So a year and a half ago, he hired some former graffiti artists to draw a mural on both sides. Allard is now battling the city about signage laws but says the store hasn’t been tagged since the drawings went up.

“If you don’t consider the sides of our building art, then I don’t think you can understand art,” Allard said.

Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com