Scott Railsback is not a vigilante by nature.

But the pragmatic vice president of Mure Corp., a property development and management firm in Whittier, admits that after spending countless hours and thousands of dollars removing graffiti from the buildings managed by his company, he was at the end of his rope.

That was until he decided to take matters into his own hands.

With his brother and father, Railsback developed a unique graffiti deterrent using the ScareCrow motion-activated sprinkler by Contech Electronics. Since putting in the system nine months ago, his company's buildings -- which were previously vandalized at least twice a week -- have only been hit three times.

Railsback installed the first system in August 2007. He said the building was tagged the second night after the installation but the vandal did not get the job done.

"It was a partial tag - only a few letters," Railsback said. "The ground was wet from the system being triggered. We laughed long and hard thinking about the tagger getting soaked without knowing where it came from."

Railsback says he plans to install ScareCrows at all his company's graffiti problem areas. He mounted the ScareCrows, which have been used by gardeners as an animal deterrent for 12 years, 15 feet high on the buildings, spaced approximately 20 feet apart. He plumbed them into the internal water supply for each building and pointed them straight down.