'Red Light Robin Hood' Faces 17-Count Indictment Friday

A Long Island man who calls himself the "Red Light Robin Hood" will be arraigned on a 17-count felony indictment on Friday for causing $85,000 to red light cameras, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said.

Sixteen of the charges in the indictment allege that Stephen Ruth removed the covers of circuit boxes operating the cameras and cut the wiring inside, rendering them inoperable.

Ruth was arrested just hours after a CBS 2 report was published in which Ruth said he had damaged dozens of the cameras over an April week.

“I cut the cable wires, making it useless,” Ruth said, according to the report. “I’ve made it dysfunctional, just like the whole red light camera program.”

Ruth, whose Facebook profile picture is his latest mugshot, was also arrested last August after he tampered with red light cameras in Ronkonkoma, pointing them upward so that they could not capture violators. Ruth posted a YouTube video of himself tampering with the cameras and encouraging others to do the same. That video has been viewed more than 165,000 times.

“I’m going to show you how easy it is to take the power back,” Ruth says in the video. ”It doesn’t take more than a minute and the gratification is huge.”

After he uses an expandable pole to push a camera skyward, he boosts, “I just saved people about $10,000 today.”

Ruth's latest arrest came just days after Newsday reported that nearly half of the intersections that have red light cameras in Suffolk have seen an increase in accidents.

Ruth is charged with 17 counts of second degree criminal mischief, a class D felony punishable by a maximum sentence of two and one-third to seven years in prison, the DA said.

The cost of the damage caused to the 17 disabled cameras cited in the indictment is estimated by the manufacturer and the contractor assigned to repair or replace them to be approximately $5,000 per unit, or approximately $85,000 in total, Spota said.

Ruth will be arraigned before State Supreme Court Justice John Collins in Riverhead at 9:30 a.m. Friday.

Here's Ruth speaking before the Suffolk County Legislature on Wednesday:

And here's Suffolk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini speaking after Ruth's latest arrest: