LOS ANGELES — Downtown Los Angeles has seen more than its share of indignity over the last few years.

The pandemic sent office vacancy rates rising as masses of in-person workers stayed home, and, in turn, many restaurants and businesses shuttered. Homelessness soared amid interconnected economic, mental health and drug crises.

And though downtown has since seen some development, a looming sense of disarray and decline lingers. After the 6th Street Viaduct was triumphantly unveiled, its hype quickly gave way to unruly street takeovers and copper thieves wire-stripping its lighting.

Even as the skyline expanded, Angelenos' attention fell on two skyscrapers that taggers had almost entirely covered in graffiti.

Which is why this weekend's shocking act of vandalism that took out six of the city's mature trees felt all the more disheartening.

"This has struck a chord," said Cassy Horton, a 37-year-old downtown resident. "It just really like flies in the face of everything that we're trying to do [to revitalize] the community, and for somebody to go around ... and set back what little progress we already have ... was really, really upsetting and hurtful."

Along with safety, she said, green space has been one of the top concerns of the almost 100,000 people who live downtown, so the attack on some of the area's few trees particularly angered people.

"It's kind of an 'Enough is enough,'" said Horton, who serves on the board of directors of the Downtown Los Angeles Residents Assn., which advocates for more than 2,300 residents and community stakeholders. "A lot of the issues that we face when we're talking about homelessness and mental health and open-air drug use and all of these things — they feel really thorny and complicated. ... But something like this, it's become a bit of a rallying cry for people downtown. We want to have a warm, welcoming, safe public realm."

Many of the downed trees were discovered Saturday morning, when images of the sawed trunks and their massive, felled branches lit up online message boards and went viral on social media.

On Wednesday, the LAPD announced the arrest of Samuel Patrick Groft, 45, on suspicion of felony vandalism. Investigators say they linked the suspect to 13 downed trees in five locations across the city, and tips about additional trees continue to come. Groft was reportedly captured on surveillance footage using an electric chainsaw to cut down the trees on several different days, at several different times for more than a week. The earliest confirmed date was April 13.

StreetsLA, the city bureau responsible for maintaining streets and the urban forest, said its teams confirmed a total of six trees vandalized downtown this past weekend: three ficus, two sycamore and one Chinese elm, according to a statement from bureau director Dan Halden. These large shade trees, many along South Grand Avenue, were severed at the base or cut several feet above the pavement. He didn't immediately respond to questions about trees that were cut in other parts of L.A.

The StreetsLA team "quickly responded and cleared the debris from all six locations," Halden said. He said they were still evaluating the total cost of the damage and of potential replacements.

For many, this blatant act of disrespect represents the latest failure by city officials to keep downtown from further deterioration, and underscores a gnawing feeling that the heart of Los Angeles has fallen by the wayside.

"It's indicative of the lack of regard," said John Sischo, a longtime developer downtown. "It's because no one is really caring. ... This stuff happens when there's not enough people."

Sischo said it's hard to get people and businesses to return to the area when there are real and perceived safety concerns that remain unaddressed. A turnaround requires addressing homelessness through an engaged and proactive government that works cooperatively with business and local leaders, he said. He hasn't seen that yet.

In many ways, Paul Kaufman, a small business owner downtown, agrees.

"There are some areas of progress, but it seems very halting," Kaufman said, who loves the area and believes it deserves better. "Something seems really great and then it withers. .... The real thing to make downtown work and feel safer is to have more people there."

Downtown offices remain about one-third vacant, according to real estate brokerage CBRE, with the pandemic's effects still looming large. Crime rates in the area appear to be relatively stable over the last few months, according to available data from LAPD's Central Division, which covers all of downtown. (However, it's hard to comprehensively evaluate how much crime has changed over the last few years, as the LAPD recently overhauled how it records such statistics.)

But there have been areas of progress and resilience: Apartments downtown have remained relatively full. New restaurants are opening, Metro's regional connector is up and running, and several new high-end retail and hotel spaces have debuted. Plus, plans to revitalize the L.A. Convention Center and gear up for the the 2028 Olympics promise a wave of investment in downtown.

And perhaps that's why this violent assault on the community's trees "really struck a nerve," said Nick Griffin, the executive vice president of the DTLA Alliance, formerly the Downtown Center Improvement District.

"In the downtown L.A. community, we are working to bring downtown back and [are] particularly focused on improving the public realm — this just seemed like such a senseless attack on that," Griffin said. "It just seems so absurdly senseless."

But he and other area organizers are hopeful the concern about the trees — and what it means about the state of downtown living — could inspire renewed action, investment and hope.

"In some ways, one of the key things that we're focused on is building the community and coalitions that it takes to revitalize a place like downtown," Griffin said. "There's no one silver bullet and there's no one organization that can do it."

Ricardo Sebastián, an entrepreneur who lives and works downtown, has been trying to change the perception of the neighborhood through social media and marketing campaigns — but unfortunately, it feels like this incident could hurt those efforts.

"This actually perpetuates the stereotype that downtown is dirty, filthy, unsafe," Sebastián said. "We can paint and we can prime and we can build out storefronts and bring in really interesting businesses. ... But if we have people coming into town wielding chainsaws or defacing [buildings] .... we have to work that much harder."

For some, that's the plan.

Horton and other board members from the residents group have called for immediate action from city officials, both to replace the trees and to hold the perpetrator to account — in an effort to help "shift the anti-social, chaotic trajectory of our neighborhood," the group wrote in a letter to city officials. The group said it looked forward to working with officials, notably Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents downtown, to ensure that "the loss of these trees signals the beginning of the end of the ongoing corrosion of DTLA's public realm."

"We need champions; we need folks in L.A. to care about downtown and to see it as the heart of our city," Horton said. "It's where we convene, it's where we protest, it's where we go out. ... We're starting to see some of our elected leaders step up and support us, but our challenges are acute."

In a public statement, Jurado's office said her team was in "close communication" with the LAPD about its ongoing investigation, and that she had brought forward a motion that would increase penalties in the municipal code for tree injury violations, in hopes of deterring future incidents. The statement thanked the community for bringing the issue to officials' attention, saying "this is exactly what co-governance in action looks like. Stay tuned for updates."

The office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement calling the act "beyond comprehension."

"City public works crews are assessing the damage and we will be making plans to quickly replace these damaged trees," Bass' spokesperson Zach Seidl said in a statement. "Those responsible must be held accountable."

But some didn't see this incident as a sign of larger issues downtown, though there's a clear environmental loss with losing any tree: They provide shade, stormwater and pollution management and habitats for birds and other small animals. Urban trees have also been found to slow the deterioration of streets and reduce crime.

"It's a huge hit," said Lee Coffee, who lives and works in downtown L.A., mostly lamenting the loss of shade. But he called the whole ordeal "kind of random."

"The cleanup was really fast," Coffee said. "I haven't noticed any other events like this."

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Times staff writers Roger Vincent and Clara Harter contributed to this report.

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