Crews are back to work Monday morning on the Sixth Street Bridge, cleaning up all the graffiti left behind by vandals.
After spending $588 million on the bridge, LA County is spending more money to keep it safe and clean -- and a lot of the work that goes into those efforts takes place in the early morning hours before the city wakes up.
Humberto Bautista, Assistant Director of the City's Office of Community Beautification
The cleaning efforts start at the midpoint of the bridge, with crews walking to the other areas with graffiti.
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"We start here because it is the safest place to park, and then we start removing the graffiti as we walk up," Humberto Bautista, Assistant Director of the City's Office of Community Beautification, told NBC4. "We will start in the middle heading to Boyle then head back to the other side."
Graffiti started appearing on the bridge almost immediately after it opened, with few signs of slowing down.
Bautista and his crew from the Gang Alternatives Program have plans to clean the bridge all morning.
"We are removing stickers. There's a lot of graffiti on the walls, and we paint over it," Bautista said. "We've seen it on the floor, too."
Bautista added that there's also a decent amount of litter on the bridge, such as "water containers and snack bags."
The bridge has seen a lot of police activity in the past few days, as authorities try to maintain the bridge and put a stop to the illegal activities taking place there.
"It's a shame because it's a brand new bridge and here we have to maintain it," Bautista said.
Bautista brought his family to the bridge over the weekend, expecting "to have a nice view and everything," and was instead greeted with a closed bridge and police activity.
"I wish [the vandals] would just appreciate the brand new bridge that we have," he said.
Bautista's cleanup crew -- part of the Gang Alternatives Program -- will work for five hours on Monday to remove the graffiti, starting at 5:30 a.m.
