Anonymous
Source: Santa Barbara County District Attorney
Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce E. Dudley announced today that a felony complaint has been filed against James Allen Carr, 76, of Elk Grove, California and Enriquez Calles Vasquez, 51, of North Highlands, California. Mr. Carr and Mr. Vasquez have been charged with two felony violations; Conspiracy to Commit Vandalism, in violation of Penal Code section 182(a)(1), and Vandalism causing damage over $10,000, in violation of Penal Code section 594(a)(3). Additionally, Mr. Carr and Mr. Vasquez are charged with 3 misdemeanor violations of Santa Barbara Municipal Code section 15.20.115 (Unlawful Tree Removal from a Parkway), and 1 misdemeanor violation of Santa Barbara Municipal Code section 15.24.020 (Unlawful Tree Removal from a Setback).
It is alleged that in December of 2020, Mr. Carr and Mr. Vasquez illegally cut down and removed 3 Eugena Trees owned by the City of Santa Barbara, and located on City of Santa Barbara property in front of a house on Paterna Road on the Riviera, owned by Mr. Carr. It is also alleged that Mr. Carr and Mr. Vasquez illegally removed a 4 th Eugena Tree located on Mr. Carr’s property. The Eugena Trees are estimated to have been over 50 years old, and the cost of replacing the 3 City of Santa Barbara-owned trees is estimated to be over $100,000.
Mr. Carr and Mr. Vasquez were previously charged by the Santa Barbara City Attorney in January 2021 with the 4 misdemeanor Municipal Code violations, and those charges are still pending, however the District Attorney’s felony complaint has incorporated those 4 misdemeanor charges and the District Attorney’s Office will take over the prosecution of the case going forward.
The Arraignment on the Felony Complaint is set for July 12, 2021, in Department 8 of the Santa Barbara Superior Court.
Ridiculous. Homeless people can illegally camp and defecate in the streets but god forbid a tree was removed. Felony charges??? geez.
So it’s legal to go around and steal and modify and cut other people’s property now? Who knew, thanks for letting us know.
Felony charges are extreme. Fine him an insane amount of money, plant 5 more trees, and call it a day.
Apparently stealing and modification is legal for certain people, because I don’t see the homeless being prosecuted/persecuted by the district attorney. The homeless are stealing, all the time. The homeless are also modifying other people’s property (tax payer’s property) when they transform public places such as parks and the sides of freeways into tent cities. What about the trees that are burned and permanently modified when the homeless camps go up in flames? Do you support taking the homeless to court and making them pay restitution for the millions of dollars of damage they’ve done to our property?
This is the defense, support and enabling of the homeless—at the expense of all logic—that I referenced yesterday on another article. False equivalences abound.
“…illegally cut down and removed 3 Eugenia Trees….”….and we cannot safely take our families to any of our public parks.
“…illegally cut down and removed 3 Eugenia Trees….”….and our sidewalks are strewn with drugged-out street people.
“…illegally cut down and removed 3 Eugenia Trees….”….and the streets are in horrible condition.
“…illegally cut down and removed 3 Eugenia Trees….”….and the homeless camps thrive and burn.
“…illegally cut down and removed 3 Eugenia Trees….”….and yet thieves rule our parking lots.
“…illegally cut down and removed 3 Eugenia Trees….”….and yet we rent entire hotels to house street people who won’t help themselves.
“…illegally cut down and removed 3 Eugenia Trees….”….and yet we will vote the same scum into positions of power for all the wrong reasons. We deserve to be treated terribly.
What’s the story behind this? What events led up to the destruction of the trees? How were the trees destroyed? There must be some explanation for the felony charges.
i think you’ve had way too many chemicals. that’s just ridiculous. grow some compassion
Wow what a HUGE waste of our tax dollars and the time of our DA. I think Joyce and Ariel both need new jobs if this is what they call crime fighting. what a huge waste, and frankly….so f’n what. he cut some trees down on HIS property. City of SB needs to get over it.
The lawsuit says the owner is from Elk Grove but when I saw these trees being cut down (no, I did not report it because I didn’t even think of it at the time) the guy who was there and directing the crew as if he were an owner was driving a Mercedes G Wagon with LA plate frames. I’m sure neighbors are the ones who reported this out of town clown and I am so glad they did. I don’t want people coming in from all over and cutting down city property and changing the character of our town.
My compassion will begin when these homeless are actually off the street and confined to institutions where they stand a better chance at receiving the real help they need.
Good. The wanton destruction of City trees cannot go unpunished. Hopefully these two men will learn to curb such felonious behavior. Paying money is a good way to make them feel the pain of their callous and damaging deed. I have never been a fan of “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to beg for permission.” (And they’re Eugenia trees, not “Eugena.”)
There had got to be more to it than that. Are the trees on land the city owns, or an easement on his property. Did he try to remove the trees legally before removing g them illegally. Did the city warn him not to remove the trees? Did he believe the trees were on his property and not realize he was breaking the law?
Three of the trees were on City of SB property; they belonged to all of us and I am grateful that DA Dudley has filed serious charges. Not just to punish, although that’s important, but to deter other homeowners, tired of looking at City trees and thinking about cutting them down. Ariel Colonne, the city attorney, has nothing to do with criminal law violations and charges.
“Do you support taking the homeless to court and making them pay restitution for the millions of dollars of damage they’ve done to our property?” Yes I support it – do you have security footage of which ones committed the crimes?
Insane and completely out of the scope for the crime. Dudley must be gearing up for a run at State AG.
Maybe you should move to Goleta
Maybe you should take some art lessons.
And when do the taxpayers of this fair city get to bring felony charges against the ‘Urban Forest Superintendent’ for the decades long failure to properly maintain the trees in the city owned parkway. It literally takes years to get the ‘Urban Forest Department’ to do the most basic maintenance on street trees.
Are you arguing for the right to cut down city owned trees? Never met someone who hates trees before lmao
This man destroyed publically owned property — literal trees — for the sole purpose of increasing the value of his asset for sale, and some of you are arguing on his behalf. Brain damage.
Make him repay the replacement cost of the trees (100k plus) plus court fee’s…but felonies??? I love trees but that’s ridiculously heavy handed.
Stripping off the lower branches does not turn a eugenia shrub into a tree. This city and county has gone totally mad – vagrants can burn down any tree they want anywhere, and we are forced to look at their deadly scars every time we drive the 101. People should be rewarded for getting rid of buggy, messy, root invasive eugenias. And every vagrant who destroys another tree, or shrub or grass land shall now feel the full force of the law too. No two systems of justice, Ms Dudley.
I didn’t see anyone arguing for the right to cut down city owned trees…just the laughably absurd decision to make it a felony case. I mean, where do you stop Shmonk? If you care about trees, shouldn’t these people spend the rest of their lives in jail…or maybe even something worse? Cant someone be “for” trees but also realize that felony charges are wildly over the top?
Santa Barbara 100 yrs ago had ZERO trees on the “Riviera” – NONE. These non native trees were planted, many are overgrown and detrimental to the eco system, littering leaves, bark and blossoms /fruit clogging up our creeks and waterways.
The DA, in all her wisdom, doesn’t give a S#*t about prosecuting REAL CRIMINALS… they don’t have the mean$ to recoup money into the County Judicial Sy$tem… but hey, this old guy who maybe has another 10 or so years to live and a fat wallet….LETS PROSECUTE!!!!
When the city makes you pay to maintain these trees, they are not “public property”. Nor it the law evenly applied since vagrants burn down trees and hillsides with zero consequences. Get right with the law, smonk.
I will venture to guess the non-homeowners on this site that have no investment in the community at large, are the ones most outraged… LOL
@OAITW….Exactly…! Well said…! We have been dealing with idiots in the “Urban Forest Dept” for 20 years…
A new city council majority can start rolling back the punitive and draconian “urban forest” nonsense tomorrow. Written by an idealistic tree hugger former city council; and will unwritten by pragmatic centrists on a new city council dedicated to taking this city back to common sense. Every owner should have a de minimis option to handle one’s own property, including non-native shrubs left by prior owners in his quasi public parking strip area. Nothing to love or protect about a shrub pruned to look like a lollipop. And it is certainly not a “tree”.
Hey Coastwatch, your irrational entitlement is showing
Babycakes: Talking nothing away from illegal tree removal, you have hit some important nails (issues) on the head. Under weak city councils and mayors, our once beautiful and safe city has become unkept and unsafe. These are two of the reasons that families are moving out of cities all over the country. People want order and safety in their communities and will eventually go to extremes to get them. The city council is failing to do their job!
The properties in this location each have a strip landscaping between the sidewalk and the street. This is where the trees in question were located. Interestingly, the neighboring houses had no trees in these planting areas. Even more interestingly, each of these planting areas appears to be maintained by the adjacent property owner and each has unique plantings that appear to have been selected by each property owner. How could this be if these planting areas belong to the city? Based on these observations, I think all the property owners on this block are felons for illegally altering the city’s planting areas. Alternatively. It could be the owner of this particular property has been singled out and denied the opportunity to select the plantings in front of his house in the same manner that all of his neighbors his neighbors have.
I would add, the trees in question were topped severely several years ago, which would have cleared the view. Was anyone charged with vandalism for pruning the trees then? In addition, a set of several similar trees were removed from the same planting area at nearby property a few years ago. Was anyone charged with a felony for that tree removal? I’m just trying to understand why this instance has led to felony charges.
Hey CHILLIN- I did something to make my “entitlement ” happen… I WORKED… My parents came here with nothing and worked to eck out a living… I am proud of my background and white/euro heritage- Grow up and put your big boy pants on.
sorry, but not a great use of our legal resources. They got charged more than the homeless do lighting fires. Joyce time to re-direct
Lets review.
Trees are part of urban forest and not your property.
Thus saith the City, thus it must be.
Lets say that the owner there on that street pays taxes to the curb and whose insurance has to cover accidents out to the curb but the city has a public easement across that property. The city did not plant the tree, perhaps a bird pooped out a seed, but its not a tree native to the area. Nevertheless, the city claims absolute ownership and rights to that tree. I think if it gets a couple levels past lower court, the City of SB loses and/or spends too much… so of course they’ll drop felony charges to a slam dunk misdemeanor again and settle.
Owners lawyers will counter with the endangered Joshua Tree fiasco and say fine me $500 each and make me replace the trees 1 to 1…. elsewhere.
Both sides will continue to test the others legal budget and see who blinks first.
We still hear the old saw of “you can’t fight city hall” That is because City Hall nearly always has a bigger legal budget than any one citizen. Years ago a buddy of mine worked for a public agency in the Montecito area and told me that their legal budget was insufficient to fight petty battles and so people in his department came from other towns where the clientele could be bullied by the local government lawyers. He told me they had to be careful and settle because if the case made it to appeal and the land owner won, it could set precedent that would neuter public agencies
The city of Santa Barbara is planning on cutting down a bunch of mature Jacaranda trees on Mission Street and that’s ok, but a home owner cutting down some crusty old Eugena’s is Bad.
Get over it.
Oh and $100,000.00, I’ve some Beach front property in Idaho for sale if anybody is interested.
Laws are only for people that have something!
VOTE THEM OUT!
I personally own and grow over 1000 trees and plants.
I love plants and trees. Just replace with new trees.
Eugenia’s are not special. In fact try to get a permit to plant a hedge in your front yard around your property. good luck.
Eugenia get overgrown in 5 years and are a constant pruning expense. Shrubs pruned into lollipops have no place on our city streets.
Despite the emotional downvotes from his adversaries, @CHIPOFSB has excellent legal questions. Precedents have been set and maintained. That’s all a part of how it works.
AHLIA, what should the vagrants do to replace the huge trees they have burned down, esp that immense black fire scared area by Pattterson and 101, or the massive and now threatening Carrillo Hill fire scar – what about all those birds, bees and butterflies. Worms and snakes, all reckless destroyed by vagrants. No two systems of justice, since you insist on winning preservation arguments for ALL trees.
The win on the city’s discriminatory pattern of selective enforcement. Vagrants can burn down city trees with no penalty, but property owners can not remove even a single branch without city permission and often expensive site visits and historical review. Perhaps this is a job opportunity for vagrants – farm yourself out to property owners who want to get rid of some “protected city trees” and just go cook your meth under them, for a small exchange. The city is asking their own draconian system to get gamed by something just as ludicrous. So do think about this as a potential career opportunity in these crazy upside down times when two systems of justice are still so trendy.
I would like to submit my bid for replanting the three Eugenia trees
1. Three 4ft box Eugenia trees @ $3,000.00 $9,000.00
2. Trucking @ $2,000.00 $2,000.00
3. Installation and Crane @ $5,000.00 $5,000.00
4. Watering for three months @ $5,000.00 $ 5,000.00
5. Overhead & Profit @ $79,000.00 $79,000.00
—————
$100,000.00
This is goofy, over the top. It should be treated as a civil action, not a felony prosecution. I’d like to hear Joyce’s explanation as to why she wants to put an elderly person in prison for the rest of his life because of non-native tree removal. Bizarre.
Trees are living beings, not arbitrary inert pieces of matter. Trees make oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. Trees on public property especially should not be even considered for removal by private residences or by independent contractors without full mitigation and approval from the populace.
so you drive around other peoples neighborhoods and sit in front of their houses to enjoy a tree? that’s just straight up weird. like creepy weird. Bird, Achoo, Beast. All 3 of you. Weird and creepy. Bird, you have a very twisted view of reality.
If our authorities do not know who is living in these crime riddled tent encampments already, like they certainly track known gang members elsewhere in this city, they are wholly deficient in their task of protecting public safety. They should know exactly who started the fires in each and every camp. And have full documentary evidence on file, just like every other property-owning residents has a public file open to anyone who wants this individual’s contact information. One more example of two systems of justice.
Who is starting these vagrant camp fires? If our authorities do not know who is living in these crime riddled tent encampments already, like they certainly track known gang members elsewhere in this city, they are wholly deficient in their task of protecting public safety. They should know exactly who started the fires in each and every camp. And have full documentary evidence on file, just like every other property-owning resident in this town has a public file open to anyone who wants this individual’s contact information. One more example of two systems of justice- (1) data base on every legal property owner along with full property taxation requirements subject to penalties and confiscation, and (2) vagrants, who escape every consequence for their lawless conduct, simply because they are tolerated as squatters by our city council.
Yes they do know who starts them in many cases and it’s negligence at the very least which carries weight but no criminal charges for them or for when they defecate and destroy public taxpayer property.
SACJON given your aggressive and inaccurate response seems as if you know it’s true and it hits a button for you b/c you realize the hypocrisy and can’t defend it so you just get aggressive instead, and bullyish/insulting. Typical tactic I see on here and it gets tiring.
OK…lets start a grand jury investigation; it must have something to do with ‘white privilege’, its gotta.
Things must be slow at he D.A.’s office….once again I’d love to see the Chinese lantern trees cut down in my neighborhood … and the city arborist tarred and feathered for promoting said tree choice.
Would you rather live in the desert?
The street is not lined with eugenias, this is what I really don’t understand. This property was somewhat unique in having these large trees in front of it (they had been pruned, or felony vandalized, severely a few years ago and had grown back). These trees are not a consistent theme in the neighborhood, and each property owner clearly landscapes, or felony vandalizes, the space in front of their house that apparently belongs to the city. A nearby property had a row of trees that were pruned, or felony vandalized, in a completely different style and eventually removed, or stolen, from the planting area. If you pull up the listing photos of the subject property and look at the landscaping it is hard to articulate how what they did could be felony vandalism since it looks better than the scraggly overgrown trees did. It’s not as if they put up pink flamingos or something.
YesBDM, Eugenia is a weed-like plant, grows too fast requiring much pruning. It has also been subject to horrible blight in SB for the last 20 years. Bad choice of landscape plant.
100 years ago, COASTWATCH, there were zero houses on the Riviera and now the hillside is covered with them, creating fire danger for those houses below, sucking up precious water resources to water their back and front yards, requiring an expensive desal plant to provide water baths and sometimes pools, being a visual blight for those who live below and look up to the sky….
Wait. The houses above you are sucking up your resources? Oh my… Thankfully we have a city willing to give you all the help you need to survive such a hellscape. Because having to live your life looking up at all those houses and their landscaping, stealing your sun, your air, your water and your soul must be really, really hard. Bless your heart you poor thing. Just know that God only give us what we can handle… for some, its not very much.
They are saying to purchase, move, and install 4 trees of equal size, it will cost that much. But nobody except government would do that. A sane person would just replant smaller trees and wait a few years for them to grow.
The street photo looks normal. need a before and an after photo. on google?
or there are just a few tree limbs growing over the street
right of way and are probably a hazard. maybe tree maintenance should be a
job for the road service or Cal Fire? or local FDs.
I doubt the city prunes or maintains their trees. nor their shrubs that block the
sidewalks. or shrubs grow fast and add to fires. need to ban some risky kinds.
so the solution is to transfer tree ownership to the land owner or renters or the
homeless. let them sell the firewood. and help prevent large city tree fires.
years ago, some clown snitched on a home owner who was removing ugly messy pine trees from own property – trees were on the owner side of the sidewalk.
if the city does not maintain their trees, there should be a law that gives residents
the job. and let them bill the city for the work. no permit needed. limit fine to $5,
and less if more trees are removed.
How come when vagrants burn up or damage city trees they don’t get felony charges?
ANDREA SMITH – why do you think they don’t? Have they ever caught someone (other than the TV Hill arsonist who is being charged with multiple felonies) and then not charged them with anything? Name one instance where they caught a homeless person starting a fire and then released them with no charges.
Or, are you just making up “facts” to complain?
It’s not so much about not reading as about people who pose as being concerned with “law and order” but actually have no respect for the law and only care about whether the outcomes are what they desire. Thus we get “Forget about this crime, what about this thing I don’t like?”
“over the top bit of charging”
SACJON has noted that numerous times, in part to deflect dishonest strawman arguments … to no avail.
“I don’t know all the details of how this charge developed so I will pretty nuttily suggest that it’s because Joyce Dudley lives on the street” — DM
Do you always wildly misquote people?
Pretty much everyone on here has noted the seemingly over the top nature of the felony charges… with some liking it as a deterrent and others horrified at its insanity.
And obviously ms Dudley doesn’t live on this street… but there seemingly has to be some mitigating factor being used to justify this over the top charging.
I appreciate the Inigo Montoya reference, but everything else is nonsense.
You are clearly defending “over the top nutty charges”, which deserves to be called out. I floated that there has to be mitigating circumstances for the insanity of the charges, her living on the street would be a (obviously insanely unlikely) example of a humorously evil/wrong mitigating factor…the truth is more likely it just had a ring to it and she liked the sound of big charges (or maybe her left toe tingled and that did it, as she does have a history of some bizarre charges). No one here knows “all of the details”, not you, not I, not Sac, not Ms Dudley…but from what we do know it seems nutty to go for felonies. That’s a plain and simple (and obvious) truth to someone with any honesty or sense or proportion.
What honesty or proportion have you shown? Your posts are an example of a zealous passion for punishment with no seemingly no sense of proportion or reality. Does the tree cutter have 6 fingers on his right hand or what’s the deal…?
DUKE – the owner of the property being vandalized is completely irrelevant here. You keep dodging what we all know to be true. If a homeless person or gang banger cut down or in some way damaged ANY trees to the tune of over $10,000 EVERYONE here would be screaming bloody murder and demanding Dudley arrest them and “throw the book at them.”
Heck, ANDREA SMITH is demanding that homeless people be charged for felonies for accidentally burning a tree. Can you imagine if they WILLFULLY ripped one down?
This is beyond ridiculous. I’m going to go drink by the pool. HYPOCRITES, the lot of you.
” Your posts are an example of a zealous passion for punishment with no seemingly no sense of proportion or reality. ”
Although it disgusts me to engage with this person in any way, I will note that none of my posts calls for punishing anyone for anything.