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Police say Brighton tree ninja running amok with a blade again
By adamg on Fri, 04/03/2015 - 1:35pm
A Brighton Center man who has been killing neighborhood trees for more than 10 years is being charged, again, with arborcide, this time along Winship Street and Academy Hill Road.
In a police report, an officer says he responded to a Winship Street backyard on March 11 to find several large trees "severely damaged:"
The bark on the trees has been hacked off and the tree interior damaged to the extent that removal will be necessitated.
The officer then journeyed to nearby Academy Hill Road:
A large tree in the rear of 28 Academy Hill Rd. has also been hacked with chips resting on the snow beneath the tree indicating recent activity. There are also several smaller saplings which have been severely damaged in the same parking lot area. A sign has been posted on one of the saplings by persons unknown which reads "Stop chopping trees cheese dick you are on camera."
Joseph Rizza, 65, was charged, again, with malicious destruction of property in Brighton Municipal Court. Police have brought similar charges against him in the past, for his alleged proclivity for donning a black ninja outfit, then slicing up trees just enough that they will die, but that has failed to stop him, frustrated residents say.
The city no longer even bothers planting young trees on certain Brighton Center streets, knowing they'll just get chopped down.
A spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney's office urged residents who have evidence about Rizza - and who are willing to testify in court - to contact District 14 police.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
yay for untreated mental illness
Seems the community has a catch-22: until this guy does something REALLY bad he's going to keep doing things that are mildly bad.
par for the course...
...for mental health really, schizophrenic people are often put in group homes, then once they improve they're kicked out of group homes until they become a problem again. There's just no long term solution. Even the families of people like this don't have much of a say unless the person causes serious harm to themselves or another.
Chock one up for
putting the rights of mentally unstable people above the rights of society to be protected from their actions.
And you know why that came about?
Incidents where sane people were declared insane and dangerous for various reasons, and locked away with out recourse.
But, please, tell us what your solution is, based on factual evidence (not Special Roadman Reality), that won't repeat the problems of the past.
Food for thought: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/24/1373087/-A-Black-Woman-Says-She...
So What's your solution?
I have no idea what to do. I do know that cutting down trees isn't acceptable. To tell a neighborhood that they can't have trees just to tolerate this person's illness is not an acceptable answer.
If society needs to pay for therapy/medication, fine. But if he refuses help and refuses to stop what he is doing then what choice but to restrain him?
What's your idea of dealing with this problem?
I don't claim to have one
That's the point - this is very complicated. On one hand, locking people away has been tried for centuries and it resulted in some pretty horrible things.
On the other, society needs to be kept safe.
I just don't begin to pretend that taking away all the rights of mentally ill people is the solution or acceptable in the least.
Baby Discarded With Bathwater
Yes, there were some terrible mental institutions; staffed by cruel people like Kai Winn; but shutting them all down and turning very sick people loose into the community has resulted in many other horrible things.
It goes back to President Regan claiming that "government is the problem". Instead of working harder to fix the problems in the system, they just gave up and shut it all down. Thirty-five years later, it's no wonder that untreated mental illness is so pervasive today.
Thanks Elmer
This is exactly what happened. No public will to take care of public problems in a public way.
Can they require him to wear a gps anklet?
I believe you mean, Michael Dukakis
It was the Duke himself who headed up the closing of Massachusetts State Mental Facilities. You can thank him.
Cages
For the trees, not the ninja (though that is tempting.) They have wrought iron tree cages and sheet metal trunk wraps for trees to protect trees from damage and animals, perhaps its time to invest in some in that neighborhood. Bonus points if they charge ninja dude for it.
Might not work
He's been spotted with one of those long pruning things, so he could probably just reach over the cage. He knows what he's doing: He's not trying to cut the trees down outright but to cut them in such a way to make sure they die.
There's a middle ground where
There's a middle ground where we pay for his section 8 housing and someone comes to his house 3 times a day to give him medication and take him out to Walmart or whatever. It works pretty well.
On 5/1/2014, adamg reported:
On 5/1/2014, adamg reported:
"O'Hara said the man has mental issues, but that nothing that is done for him at Bridgewater has stopped him from coming back to Brighton and going around looking for more trees to kill."
So it's not for a lack of trying. Someone needs to start being held accountable here.
It is frustrating,
especially because while I acknowledge damaging plants isn't as serious a crime as damaging animals or people, killing mature trees in urban areas is just... so awful, considering how long it will take to get a tree that old in that spot again. Also galling that we can't even get started with saplings because he keeps killing them too!
I'd say
Killing a plant that gives us oxygen so we don't die is just as bad as killing an animal, but that's neither here nor there.
Your moral compass is all out
Your moral compass is all out of whack, Jack.
This is not "mildly bad."
A mature tree is technically irreplaceable I guess but there's no doubt that this not only trespassing and vandalism but also damage of property in the thousands of dollars. Why isn't this guy being charged for that? And no, I have no doubt that he's mentally ill but if this were my tree in my yard ihe was hacking at, I'd go berserk.
Lots of value
Agreed. There have been studies that show a mature tree in front of a house significantly raises the property value. Something to the tune of $10-20k+. This person's actions have real economic consequences besides whatever it would cost to plant a sapling.
It's too bad public trees aren't awarded the same protection as domestic pets. If he was caught kicking a cat there would be far more outrage and punishment.
It would be a real shame
If a tree were to fall on this guy.
I think he has been charged
A comment here suggest neighbors have legal judgements against him, but without money he leaves them holding the bag.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/05/02/brighton-tree-ninja-b...
How has this guy not been
How has this guy not been charged for assault for "brandishing" a deadly weapon?
It boggles my mind that people have been tied up in court and put in jail for brandishing when crossing a street while hunting or having a coat blown open in the wind and someone has complained to the police to feeling threatened. Yet this guy is walking around causing malicious destruction of property while deliberately openly banishing a weapon in a threatening manner and isn't locked up.
Doesn't Boston have an ordinance making it illegal to carry a knife over a certain length as well?
It's a sad situation...
given his past of mental health issues and occasional visits to Bridgewater — and it's just one of those situations where there's seemingly no one with the time/effort to take care of him.
If it were my neighborhood I'd be annoyed and worried, but I'm guessing the police have been putting up with it for so long (decades now?) it's a "what can we do" situation. It's not like prison is the right place for this type of person either — it's just another sad case of not having the mental health infrastructure to help people with these problems. Fortunately this guy happens to take it out on trees and not people, but in a way that makes the situation harder to deal with because they can't just lock him up in a cell somewhere and throw away the key.
Can we just put him on a bus to Texas
or somewhere similarly terrible, and tell him never to come back?
Bus back?
Maybe he came here that way from Texas and given that very same message.
Somewhere without trees?
Somewhere without trees?
LOL!
Maybe he just needs a little house on the prairie. He might be like "ahhhhhh!!! Perfect!!"
Maybe
send him to Iceland.
maybe a career change
Can we get him an audition for that show "Ax Men" on the History channel. I think he could definitely hack it.
It's time for him to branch out...
career-wise.
So, just for the heck of it,
So, just for the heck of it, I googled "mental illness chopping down trees". Lo and behold, there's a *%$#load of material about the connection between mental illness and chopping down trees! One guy in Wikipedia was actuall a mass murderer who chopped his neighbors' trees down in Australia! Scary.
I have a solution...
Bring back the pillory.
YOU GUYS
blah blah blah mental health issues; can we talk about the fact that the officer quoted the phrase "cheese dick" in his police report?
In all seriousness, it is really tough to deal with a situation like this. If he is legally competent, he can't be forced to get (or continue) mental health treatment. Not sure what the right answer is here.