HELFWORKS

Attack on the Commons

A crime has been committed against small trees, as well as against the people and landscaped environment the trees benefit.

Someone has been hacking branches off multiple small trees in a city park. Over the course of several days, at least 21 individual trees were damaged. A photographer snapped photos of the vandal in the act and reported to the Parks Department and police. The photographer hadn't carried a phone, police weren't called immediately, and now we must wait to see if further destruction can be prevented.

In broad daylight, a deranged man mangled many trees, undeterred by the people who were around. Did they notice and ignore him, or not want to call police? Sometimes, people should bestir themselves.

The park where the trees were butchered is a formerly dusty-looking plaza I'd never thought to walk upon. But by 2011 it was transformed through a process of coordination between city departments like Parks, Transportation, and City Planning, and with much community input. It's become a pleasant, shaded pedestrian pathway with benches, new plantings, large old trees, and small ones, now mutilated.

Destruction is always distressing, but this is particularly so because the pandemic has decimated NYC's budget. Until the crisis, the Parks Department had done a marvelous job of invigorating previously uninspired landscapes. In parks around the city, something new blooms in one after another flower or tree, timed so there's always a display of nature's varied colors and shapes. All Spring I've been admiring the plantings in the parks near me while wondering what upkeep will fall by the wayside for lack of funds. And now, these beautiful small trees, will they survive their mauling? Will the damage always be evident, an eyesore and a loss?

The lone tree near the head of Allen Street stands now a disfigured sentinel, marker of mental illness and indifference.