Melvindale business owner known for taping hundreds of billboards to light poles sentenced

DETROIT – Following charges filed in July 2023, William Shaw was sentenced to 40 hours of community service for violating municipal signage regulations by repeatedly hanging commercial signs without proper permits.

Shaw's community service began Friday, June 28, with a clear demonstration of the consequences of his actions. He began by removing illegally posted signs in the area of ​​7 Mile and Evergreen roads, then traveled with the city's blight control team to other locations.

Violations of signage rules are considered a public nuisance because they create visual clutter.

Court documents revealed that Shaw was charged with 59 misdemeanors for violating the municipal sign ordinance.

In 2022, Detroit's Blight to Beauty program launched a nuisance sign removal process with the goal of removing illegally placed signs after receiving complaints from residents.

After 18 months of regular removals by the city's anti-defacement division and contact with business owners, the team has seen a decrease in illegal signage.

During the summer of 2023, the team removed an average of more than 400 panels, which is a significant decrease from the average of more than 1,700 panels removed during the same period the previous year.

Even though the numbers were down, some violators did not remove their illegal signs due to warnings, forcing the city to take legal action.

Initial incident of William Shaw IV

Shaw's Plumbing was the worst offender among the first 20 identified. From February 2022 to July 2023, the city used funds and manpower to take down more than 615 Shaw signs in every corner of Detroit.

During the process, Shaw, who lives in Ecorse, received warnings for nuisance signage, including text messages sent to every known phone number, repeated phone calls, and cease and desist letters from the legal department demanding he stop cluttering our city with his signs.

In addition to the warnings, the Law Department sent a Fair Warning letter requesting that the owner or representative of Shaws attend a meeting on July 17, 2023 with the Law Department to address continued violations of the City Ordinance.

Shaw ignored all attempts to inform him of the sign ordinances and continued to nail his signs to city property.

Shaw placed hundreds of illegal signs in Detroit neighborhoods and spent extra effort and money to keep them there.

Instead of a basic stapler, Shaw used a nail gun with threaded nails and wide plastic collars, which made removing them extremely difficult. In many cases, city workers had to use a box cutter to cut around the sturdy nail heads.

Shaw also installed many of its signs high up, making them difficult to remove. He suggested that the person installing the signs be on a ladder or in the back of a truck rather than on foot.

The Detroit Law Department requested indictments, and on July 28, 2023, the 36th District Court authorized indictments on 59 counts of violating the City of Detroit's sign ordinance.