It’s a tree-mendous crime!
One week after watching cops chase down, and then release, the man who drove a truck into a beloved, shade-giving neighbor, Boerum Hill tree-lover Wendy Richards wants city officials to force the arborcidal maniac to pay restitution.
“This driver hit a beautiful, 100-year-old tree twice and he didn’t even think it was a crime,” Richards told The Stoop this week, describing how cops first chased the branch-breaker — only to let him go with a chuckle and handshake.
“I looked outside and the policemen were treating the guy like an old buddy,” she said.
The longtime Bergen Street resident had called the police to report the hit-and-run against the tree, a city-owned elm that had flourished on the sidewalk in front of her brownstone between Hoyt and Bond streets.
Now she’s demanding that the city “get moving on punishing this driver who was obviously very inexperienced.”
City law supports the amateur arborist’s call for payback. Anyone who damages a tree “accidentally or intentionally” is liable for the cost of nursing the tree back to health — or in the case of a fatality, a replanting, according to Parks Department code.
In 2006, eight legal claims were filed against drivers — even though the city lost 127 trees that year. Parks Department spokesman Phil Abramson said the gap is a result of so many tree crashes going unreported.
“Anyone who sees a vehicle hit a tree should call 311,” he said.
He advised witnesses to try to take photos and record license plate numbers.
