DENVER -- Residents in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood claim they have figured out how to banish graffiti for good.

It’s called the Brush Off Program and it’s modeled after a successful anti-graffiti campaign in San Jose, Calif.

Athmar Park Neighborhood Association member Karen Cuthbertson said the idea is simple.

“[Brush Off volunteers] adopt the stop sign at the corner or the light pole in front of their house and they sign on to keep that one thing graffiti-free,” she said.

Cuthbertson said it’s less overwhelming than trying to take on an entire neighborhood full of graffiti.

“Anybody can do one thing,” she said.

Cuthbertson has volunteered to watch two graffiti-prone stop signs at the intersection near her house. She said when she first started the program, she frequently had to clean the signs using supplies provided by the City of Denver.

But after three months, the taggers apparently got tired of the clean-up and moved on.

“It has been months since I've seen graffiti on any of these stop signs,” Cuthbertson said. A neighbor across the street is watching a bus bench that is regularly vandalized.

Neddra Niblet, the City of Denver’s Graffiti Program Coordinator, said the key to the success of the program, is getting to the graffiti quickly.

“The best way to deter graffiti is to get it down as quickly as possible,” she said. “If you can get graffiti down especially between 24 and 48 hours, it really does discourage the tagger.”

Gregory Decker, who owns Music Gear Guys, a guitar shop on South Broadway, said he has reservations about the Brush Off program because so many other anti-graffiti campaigns have failed.

Decker chose to beat the taggers who were vandalizing his shop by joining them.

“I actually hired a professional tagger to paint the wall,” Decker said of a billboard on the roof of his building that is regularly tagged. “I had him write a little note saying please don’t tag anymore.”

Decker said his strategy has worked. He said he hopes the Brush Off program will work as well.

Athmar Park residents say they are already seeing a difference.

"It has been months since I've seen graffiti on any of these stop signs," said Cuthbertson. “If you say not on my block and not on my watch, then they go someplace else."

Athmar Park is located in southwest Denver and is bordered by Alameda avenue on the north, Mississippi avenue on the south, Federal boulevard on the west and the South Platte River on the east.

To report graffiti or become a Brush Off partner in your Denver neighborhood, you can call the City of Denver hotline at 720-865-STOP.