DENVER -- Big Brother may be watching the next time a tagger spray-paints graffiti on a Denver wall.

Denver police will be the first agency in the country to set out cameras that can sense "graffiti activity," summon nearby officers with a text message and e-mail a picture to a police computer -- all while recording video that could be used as evidence.

City officials hope their pilot project, using eight "Graffiti Cams" for 30 days starting next month, will help erase a growing problem. The cameras are made by Law Enforcement Associates, a spy-gear company that produces concealed microphones, bomb-sniffing equipment and a host of other devices it says can't talk about.

"If you are a tagger in the city of Denver, you're going to get caught," said Paul Feldman, president and chief executive officer of Law Enforcement Associates. "That is what this technology does."

The cameras are activated by motion, but Feldman said it takes more than just walking by to start them rolling. They can be moved regularly to different locations to keep vandals off-guard.

The idea is to allow officers catch taggers in the act rather than waiting until the next morning to begin gathering evidence.

"After the fact of a lot of graffiti, you can wake up in the morning and say, 'Ah, somebody did this,"' Feldman said. "What we are going to do with our technology is put a police officer at the scene of the crime to make an arrest."

The move is part of a three-year plan to rid the city of graffiti. Last year, Denver saw a 50 percent increase in graffiti reports, leading Mayor John Hickenlooper and other city leaders to call a graffiti summit.

"It has spread to a level that even five or 10 years ago people would have thought was unimaginable," the mayor said Wednesday.

The city spends about $1 million each year cleaning up the scribbles, signs and symbols left on darkened walls, fences and trash bins. And that figure does not account for the money spent by residents and business owners.

"That is real money," Hickenlooper said, and with a possible recession on the horizon, "that is exactly when this type of activity is worst."

He said Denver could be a "trailblazer" in combating graffiti.

Local business owners were pleased to hear of the new technology.

"We're constantly having to clean it up," said Phillip Gunn, owner of Gunn Automotive. "It's a big expense and it just deteriorates from the appearance of the building and neighborhood."

The police department is on board.

"From what I've seen so far, we feel the Graffiti Cam is going to be a powerful weapon in the arsenal," Sgt. Ernie Martinez said.

The cameras retail at just under $5,000, but Feldman has agreed to let Denver use them free of charge, betting that the result will be so impressive "you can't put a price on it."

Feldman said his company is well-know in among undercover law enforcement officers. He said he could not discuss many of the products his company makes for security reasons, but he was willing to sum it up:

"Anything that James Bond is using, that's what we manufacture."