It's a civil and criminal matter.
If you are serious as to pursuing both or either...
1) Have your property surveyed. Have the licensed surveyor mark the line with clear stakes down the line in question. Video the damage and the signage.
2) Lawyer up. Be ready to spend a bunch. Sue the neighbor.
3) After you have reconstructed the property line, get estimates from tree and landscape places as to what they will charge to replace the damaged stuff, and repair what other damages there are. Take that dollar amount to the district attorney and file charges on the neighbor for felony destruction of private property.
4) While the legal survey stakes are in place, have a fencing crew put up a new, formidable fence. Good fences make for good neighbors.
Illustration:
Ok this one gets pretty close to the actual issue, so i will use this one. I have been through the legal system up to the DA. The field cop wouldn't do squat in spite of
physical evidence (destruction)
video evidence from under 10 minutes before he arrived (of them operating a bulldozer 100' inside my yard)
and a confession of the neighbor (yep that oak tree was too close to my new garage so we bulldozed it and cut it up for firewood)
The blue wall meant that his sheriff backed him, so up to the head of dept is totally useless...
DA said he was not going to second guess the sheriff (which is BS cause they do it routinely by plea deals) so as i see it all criminal avenues are closed.
My only question is does this compute and did I miss any way to "force" a ticket to be written. I do not think I did.
I found it interesting that I said they broke the law, the cop said they broke the law, the neighbor admitted to doing what I said they did, and there is absolutely no recourse whatsoever, criminally.
I have no interest in civil litigation, watching her bawl, begging me to please stop was better than forcing her into bankruptcy, FAR better...
Now many of you just want entertained, as do i on the campfire, yet reading and comprehension was not heavily emphasized at your schoolin'
It is not germane to the situation but this is in the southeastern US for those naturally inquisitive sorts, no building nor set-back nor zoning violations occurred, two surveys were done, one licensed one by me parallel lines 4" apart, I actually gained 4" by the other guys work, no dispute at all about the line just which side they are allowed to destroy
I never wanted the cops called and in fact told my wife not to call them, this, of course guaranteed that she would do just that.
As soon as the law was involved many of my options for recourse went away, but the neighbor was walking in my yard and throwing rocks in it from their back fill dirt within five minutes of the cop leaving, screaming obscenities at me daring me to call him back.
I just sat with the wheels turning, mulling my options...
And just for the record even though under constant assault I was civil for several years till they set my place on fire, (stupidity not arson) at that point the civility ended
After the snot soaked surrender flag incident where she groveled and begged me to stop she has been caught ripping down signs on the next neighbor up the road, so i think you could assume there has been no epiphany where she sees the error of her ways.
Technically we have a korean style cease fire, the tear and snot soaked white flag was picked up (with sticks) and put aside (to dry out)