It's called budgeting; in this case your resources.  Government is always beat up for not budgeting money.  If you have finite resources you can't do everything.   Spending valuable police and court time for no end result is wasteful.  I don't believe this case justifies taking valuable resources away from serious person crimes just because of $3000 worth of trees.  The DA already has too little funding to prosecute many serious crimes; wasting her office's time is also silly.   Re-plant the trees and get over it.