St. Pete not a fan of fanny tags across city

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St. Pete is being overrun with rear ends. Police are trying to figure out who has been tagging walls downtown with a drawing that looks an awful lot like a naked buttock.

"It is clearly an image of a butt," said an employee of a coffee shop where the image was tagged on the bathroom wall.

"It appears to be a posterior or two," offered a worker downtown.

"It looks like a butt with three cheeks," said another passerby.

The painted posteriors have shown up mostly downtown -- behind buildings, the bottoms of walls, and the rears of restaurants.

They feature between two and seven cheeks and have produced just as many opinions.

"I don't think it is funny at all," said one downtown worker. "I don't think it is very good either. It's not very creative."

St. Pete police have documented at least 20 tuchuses, most of which have already been wiped by the property owners.

"It has been speculated that is part of the human anatomy," said St. Pete Police Assistant Chief Jim Previtera. "But what it looks like to us is vandalism."

Police aren't yet close to identifying the person who has been moonlighting in moons, but when they do, that person will have to pay out the you-know-what for each property to be cleaned.

They could even face a felony.

"We have one detective who, in addition to some other duties, his duty is to document it, to investigate graffiti downtown and, in recent weeks, I have added additional people to investigate it because the problem is beginning to spread," said Previtera.

The city of St. Pete is not keen on the keesters and neither are most people who spoke with FOX 13 downtown. One man analyzed it from an art critic's perspective. 

"It's a classic. Is it art or not? My personal angle on it is it's just vandalism. One is funny. Beyond that? No more," he decided.

St. Pete police make two to three arrests a year for graffiti.