Recently a 44-year-old Laytonville man with a history of multiple police “contacts” was busted down in Brooktrails on several charges.
Here’s the story:
He’s someone well known to me and my co-workers at the Laytonville County Water District. Like the cops, we’ve had more than our fair share of “contacts” with this guy. He’s one of these shiftless mopes with a long history of petty theft, vandalism and anti-social behavior in our community.
According to the Willts Police blotter, he was snagged after a violent encounter with a Brooktrails woman who told officers that the suspect, Kristoff Suba, of Laytonville, had attacked her that morning, and “alluded to a history of domestic violence by Suba.” The victim explained that she was able to “prevent further attacks from Suba (that morning) by warding him off with a stun gun,” and the Willits Police notes that “statements from the victim, witnesses, and evidence on scene supported the victim’s account.”
Hang on for a second, the incident will now get your full attention.
The victim told officers that she also had found a suspected pipe bomb in Suba’s belongings. The cops searched a vehicle and found what they described as “a suspected improvised explosive device (IED) made of PVC pipe. Personnel from the Humboldt Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad then responded and reportedly determined the IED was operational and in working condition.” The Willts Police Department adds that “based on statements from the parties, and no evidence of the manufacturing of destructive devices at the residence, there is believed to be no danger to the public.” The Willits Police thanked the Sheriff’s Office and the Humboldt Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad for their assistance.”
I assumed this woman-beating coward, miscreant, and IED transporter, would be locked up tight pending the criminal justice process running its course.
Nope, didn’t happen, he was soon back out on the streets where he doesn’t belong.
Well, guess what?
Last Sunday, I received a phone call informing me that Mr. Suba was filling a barrel with water on a property not his own. In fact, he doesn’t have a property of his own. For the past two years, Suba has been stealing water from fire hydrants, turning hydrants on and wasting water, and vandalizing water district water meters.
I went out to the site and confronted him, and sent him on his way. I’ll spare you all of the other details regarding our encounter.
We’ve spent a lot of our time dealing with this guy and his miscreant antics.
Ditto for Sheriff’s deputies.
I want to thank the Sheriff’s Deputy who responded to this most recent event. He was just as frustrated as I was.
The bottom line is we should not have to deal with characters like this guy.
The real question is why was Suba cut loose from jail after being arrested for domestic violence and being in possession of a pipe bomb that was “was operational and in working condition.”
The state of California needs to abandon the Pandemic-era failed experiment with emptying its jails via “catch-and-release” policies that allow crooks and criminal misfits to avoid incarceration. Some of these new laws and policies seriously undermine basic public safety. To what end?
If you review the Sheriff’s booking logs and arrest records you’ll find that probably a little less than a hundred or so offenders commit an outsized share of crime in this county, often without any, or very short periods of time detained in jail, that would have interrupted, or at least slowed the frequency of their criminal and anti-social activity.
Sheriff Kendall will tell you that when they’re successful in keeping some of these serial offenders locked up for a while, there’s an immediate nosedive in crime in the areas they hail from. It’s a fact that jail’s revolving doors allow suspects to pirouette in and out of jail, giving crooks the freedom to carry out even more crimes and anti-social mischief.
All across California out-of-control shoplifting is causing business owners — large and small — to either close their doors or reduce their hours of operations. Businesses are doing this because state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go.
Recently, a woman who owns a shop in Ukiah reported a shoplifting incident. She says her efforts to regain a stolen item, resulted in the alleged shoplifters, three teenaged girls, assaulting her and then posting the assault on Instagram.
She went on to say, “The Ukiah Police were called, and they arrived 45 minutes after the incident. They told me that my options were to press charges or get a restraining order, but that neither option would work out well for me. The police report listed the incident as mutual combat.”
She said she feels, “incredibly let down by the Ukiah Police Department. They did nothing to help me. The theft in Ukiah downtown businesses is out of control. Small businesses can't take the losses caused by shoplifting. Some consider closing due to this issue. The Ukiah Police do not help us.”
And, don’t forget, we haven’t even discussed the ongoing tragedies that plague the Covelo community.
Clearly these sorts of incidents and situations point to disturbing indications that our vital and indispensable institutions critical to fostering and protecting public safety are not functioning as they should.
It’s a foundational concept in our democracy that people should never be asked to determine just what and how much they can put up with to live in society.
Time for all of that to change, don’t you think?
The only answer is for county officials, mainly the judges, to abandon the policy of emptying the county jail. To hell with the state Legislature and their idiotic laws that give free reign to criminals to carry out even more crimes and anti-social behavior at the expense of public safety.
Most California citizens are aware of the lack of punishment, if any, so what do we collectively do about it?
Thankyou Jim you have put in print what so many of us citizen’s have been desiring to express. I thought maybe it was only Laytonville experiencing this insane “let the criminals have their way crap”. I was told” You can’t arrest crazy” EVEN WHEN THEY TRESPASS! And what happened to all the promises to help the mental illness in our county . We are seeing more drug abuse and mental illnesses then ever before. And I have lived in Mendocino County for 60 years!!
Hey! and i know Just The Right Girl for Mr. Suba ! Cee-Cee Young and him would make a Fine pair….
Olde lady justice must be overwhelmed by the sheer volumn of criminal behavior directed towards its more normal citizens by freely roaming persecutorial minded, sociopathic types in these small Nor-Cal towns who are given free reign to mix and mingle with the general public by clueless and uber “compassionate” social workers and their sheltering agencies( Manzanita Social Services of Willits comes to mind here.)They eagerly provided a rent free apartment,free utilities, cash assistance and other convenient freebies to a drug addicted,hep-c positive long time affiliate of prison,jails and a Napa psychiatric facility who i will call “Cee-Cee”(for her protection of course) Cee-Cee was a familiar posterior pain to the local sheriffs dept and the Willits police who knew her well due to her repeated calls for assistance for the supposed crimes of neighbors unlucky enough to live in proximity to her rent free abode. She dealt Norcos and oxycontin to other addicts which she obtained from a free wheeler local script writing doctor who she provided sexual favors to in exchange for opiate based pain meds. Cee-Cee also was a highly manipulative psychopath that knew just how to twist trusting people around her little finger’ traits that are learned readily in prisons jails.mental lock ups etc. which become criminality colleges for those eager to learn the crooked ins and outs of scamming the public and law enforcement officials, psychiatists, and most Obviously eager- to- assist social workers who never live near their clients and never have their lives compromised by their own faulty decisions to let loose a psychopathic wolf mind amid a relatively trusting sheeplike public.Cee-Cee’s state funded paycation involved no job, no job training and no mandatory psychiatric visitations, but she was encouraged to attend once a week visits across the street to the tiny St. Johns Episcopal Church for Narcotics Anonymous meetings, an environment in which she flourished, using it as a social club and new customer base for her drug dealing activities from her nearby apartment.The N.A. community welcomed her and sleight of hand tricks with purchased or traded urine samples earned her counseler status at that chapter. An honest member of that N.A. chapter battling addiction who owned a Willits thrift shop known as The Purple Moose let me know of Cee-Cee’s takeover of that unfortunate group of people, the dealing of opiates out of Cee-Cees apartment was a personal transmission from Cee-Cee to me, as she thought this made her “cool” gave her street cred etc. Jobless.Bored,Lonely and with a generalized hatred of people buried in her subconscious Cee-Cee wandered around the neighborhood trying to hook up with people and assauge her black hole Loneliness, her modus operendi was to play the tearfull victim for a sympathy card, befriend that person, then eviscerate them.This did give her great pleasure,anyone unfortunate enough to live nearby was a potential victim. Mike O’ Dair manager of the Willits Playhouse Theatre and editor of a local Willits newspaper was one=involved in a heated property/trespassing dispute as Cee-Cee kept climbing over the chain link fence surroundind the thespians property and broadcasting threats, accusing Mike of having stole her cat (which vacated her premises due to abuse),the local law enforcement officials were tiring of her repeated calls for assistance for imagined sleights against her by neighbors.She then showed up in my front yard crying about her recently deceased dog “lucy” who had the magical ability to appear in the clouds looking down and Cee=Cee having became a devout Pentecostalist in prison commanly witnessed 15 story tall jesii (plural of Jesus) appeared frequently, along with personal visits from Satan in her rent free apartment at night. She talked some local Willits crafts people and artists working out of a warehouse to make a decorative coffin in record time for her dog, free of charge, then complaned bitterly that it wasnt Exactly as she desired. She kept showing up repetitively at my doorstep most conveniently at dinnertime, telling me she had found a dead mouse in her oven, so cooking meals wasnt an option anymore. Misguided compassion is Dangerous, it can blow up in ones face,create dependency and enable pathology to flourish.I invited the woman-child to dinner,a Very Bad Move on my part, swayed by such statements as” Well its my birthday,X-mas,Thanksgiving( fill in the blank and im gonna get a free dinner at The Senior Center. but the food isnt very good, but it will do. ” I had given Cee-Cee my phone No# so she could call me, thus avoiding conflict with my dinnertime schedule, this didnt work,she ignored the request and showed up anyway ( as any psychopathic mootch would do) and i ignored this behavior. becoming an enabler by repeatedly cooking her top of the line meals and giving an ear to her endless litany of sorrows, but i was also hearing lots of negative reports from neighbors and people who she had victimized.Im not a lonely type,im fine on my own, i dont ceaselessly seek out company, i had a few friends i saw on occasion and never felt driven to use other people psychologically. Cee-Cee was a destitute black hole of neediness topped off with the type of cunning resentment and manipulativeness that only long term institutionalism and truly Bad Parenting can create, Due to my naiivity i had allowed a monster entrance to my life,The woman-child was so frequently tearfull, allways wanting hugs and constant assurance yet providing absolutely nothing in returm, theres not a speck of empathy from a needy black hole mind,weird late night phone calls ending in angry vitriol featuring such content” As i just LOVE Honey Boo-Boo! ( an abysmally bad reality tv show with a massively over weight southern women who ceaselessly entered her also overweight toddler in beauty pageants) a show so Bad it was fuel for countless stand up comedians. “Jesus loves me so Much he gave me special powers to connect with dead pets in the after life and i bring those messages back to the grieving owners !” . It was Shite like this that caused me to back peddle, but the die was cast ! this Horribly Needy woman-child was set on romance ! ,she desperately wanted me to be “her old man,”her lover, and be psychologically Dependent on her, her hard set face and cruel eyes allways gave me room for caution, not in a million years would i want to cohabitat with this succubus,her repeated requests for me to come over in the evening were carefully rebuffed,the stories filtered in as her anger grew at me not being attracted to her sexually “,Hell hath no fury as a women scorned ” I tried to be as tactfull as possible and not inflame the situation, but the hatred fueled by feelings of rejection by my withdrawal from her constant neediness was too great .I mentioned by increasing prostrate issues,my lack of sexual desire as being normal for a 60 year old dude,my decades of bicycle riding having destroyed nerves in my perineal area etc. all rebuffed and turned into suggestive pictorials by her desperation; me receiving selfies of her posing suggestively in cheap lingerie, her hard face and shiny lipstick were an immediate turnoff. There were the late night hang up phone calls and she started leaving letters taped to my front door,with threats that she had relatives in the sheriffs department and anonymous friends who were going to work me over= a specious claim because Cee-Cee had no actual friends, only a handfull of customers buying narcotics out of her apartment ,news filtered in about her past dIminutive statured ex boyfriend who she regularily beat up on etc. I took her letters to the Willits Police Department they were non commital, they knew her well, had dealt with her repeatedly over fase claims of harassment/imagined persecution by neighbors that never occurred,But Hey! the womans bi-polar/schizo-effective, so theres little you can do about it ! pony up $450.00 for a restraining order and hope for the best,hope you have a great attorney.!.. Cee-Cee started showing up everywhere i went it seemed, public library, Safeway, hardware store etc. i often rode a bike through Willits at times she followed in her truck,she started carrying a manila binder and visiting my neighbors, telling them i was stalking her, verbally threatening her and vandalizing her truck, etc.she wanted any negative facts she could dig up on me and present them to the court. Kind and reasonable neighbors told me of these activities,i would see her standing on the sidewalk directly in front of my home at early A.M. hours when she knew she was sighted she would hoof it back to her slumpartment in the alleyway behind Pizza To Go on Commercial street. Things really came to a head when i rode my bike homeward on the paved path through Bud Snyder Park across the street from the Willits police dept. Cee-Cee had been banned from the new dog park up the street for hostilities she created with other dog owners and her 2 unleashed dogs took to the chase after her harshly delivered command “get him!” they were smaller breed dogs and it was not a life threatening situation, but the damn canines were doing their best to bite my ankles and sandal clad feet on the down peddle and this was round two of this nonsense! i grabbed the pepper spray canister mounted on the front of my bike and let em’ have it, it had worked previously on much larger breeds intent on sending me to Howard Hospital and it worked on them. Cee- Cee was bellowing in a complete melt down state of rage as her 2 dogs were truly her only friends and i had assaulted them. An hour or so later as i was sitting in my living room, there was a knock on my door, as i went to answer it the door flew open and there was Cee-Cee brandishing a pepperspray canister, she aimed for my eyes but i pushed the door shut and knocked her onto the walkway, she ran to the side of the house and attempted to pepper spray me through my bedroom window then headed to the backdoor to again gain entrance to my house,she left a lot of pepper spray residue on my doors and window, she then borrowed someones auto and drove repeatedly up and down West Mendocino Ave. yelling threats and taking pictures with her cell phone.I called the Willits Police: it took their usual 90 minutes plus to arrive, even though they were only 2 blocks away ,they were unimpressed as its allmost impossible to press actual charges against crazy people,( but they can return this favor successfully.) A week passed anda sheriff showed up with a shiteload of official looking papers, i was being rightfully served papers to file a restraining order against myself ,paradoxically enough with all the court fee’s and filing fee’s thereof helpfully supplied by the social service agency that helpfully brought this blankin’ miscreant into our neighborhood in the first place Courtesy of good old Manzanita Social Services ! I ended up in court in Ukiah pleading my case (which was embarrassing to me) i noticed that while i arrived by myself to face the judge( a fine woman Jeanine Nadel) she listened patiently as i am not skilled at public speaking, but suprising enough accompanying my persecutor was a Manzanita Social case worker for Cee-Cee ready to stand up and support this malevolent chronic liar without the slightest real idea of what was actually going on, i checked out wrongly supportive social worker, a very weathered looking hispanic woman with a startingly wild, frizzed out, bleached hair do and a look in her eyes of total disconnection of things going on around her,a really poor looking specimen with what i guessed had pronounced alchohol and drug addiction issues herself i.e.the witless defending the witless.The judge listened to Cee-Cee’s rambling, disjointed testimony,at no time were psychological issues discussed, allthough i did make it a point to bring this up.The judge was greatly displeased by Cee-Cees fragmented and often contradictory testimony, when Cee=Cee said “she was nursing her” pups “back from distemper=rabies” a fatal disease in dogs/ while i had attacked them in the park ,the judge had enough ! she accused Cee- Cee of perjurying herself and said her testimony” lacked any credibility”.Case Dismissed! i asked the bailiff if i could stay in the court for awhile longer? i didnt want to run into my accuser ,he relented and 10 minutes later i was out the door just in time to hear the security guy talking to an associate about “the crazy lady who was telling him about how she just won the case upstairs while she kept people from moving through the line.” As i made my way through the parking lot there was Cee-Cee waiting at the rear of her helpfull caseworkers car, mocking me while her caseworker glared at me. My main point here is that clueless social workers armed with wisdomless “compassion” can create real and long lasting difficulties for others, impacting peoples lives without a clue about the damage they do and completely get away with this type of mayhem…
If people keep voting for the same political party, they will get the same results. Continually doing the same actions, over and over, all the while expecting. a different result is called insanity.. It isn’t just Cee-Cee that is insane. It is a majority of the electorate in California as well.
Well remember who shut the state hospitals. Turns out not such a great idea. Penny wise pound foolish
You have employed a number of pejoratives in referring to and describing Mr. Soba; his name is mentioned once in the beginning, thereafter he is a coward, miscreant, etc. You might have added “human being” to your dehumanizing litany, as you have chosen to reduce him to his alleged crimes without even a glance at the big picture. Not surprising – it’s short-sighted reactionaries like yourself who gave rise to this phenomenon, the zero-tolerance, mandatory minimum, lifestyle-legislating NIMBY hypocrites who prefer punishment to rehabilitation because it gets them out of your line of sight. Because god forbid a fellow human who was dealt a bad hand and is trying to survive should put a crimp in your cushy middle-class lifestyle by throwing some harsh reality in your face. Antisocial? Damn right. How prosocial would you be living in a society that would not allow you to participate?
Society Does have open door policies that will allow people to “participate” but when one is unwilling to participate in job programs, state funded vocational training,scholastic endevours etc. and instead choose to wander around neighborhoods freely Victimizing people who have done them no harm, then that person should Not have the right to the untrammeled access to other people and belong in a setting where they recieve treatment and are Closely Monitered .Just because these miscreant Offender types are Not. In. Your. Backyard. and not victimizing you,you then have the “right” to term other people”hypocrites”= which puts you on the same level of those witlessly “compassionate” ignorant social workers etc. who dump off hardened psychopathic types into random neighborhoods who Severely and negativily impact other peoples lives without a Clue about whats Really going on. Repetitively catagorizing psychologically skewed people as “harmless neighbor types” is ignorance based on nonexperience of Facts.Its people such as yourselves that have an utterly simplistic view of reality that Enable other people to be victimized by your victims..
Kristoff is mentally ill. Noticed that you left that pearl of wisdom out of your article. Felt compelled to fill your readers in since you clearly had overlooked it, being that it’s pretty important and the main factor in why he is always in trouble with the law. He doesn’t need to be jailed for long periods of time , he needs this county to do better in the way of the mental health services that are currently the only options during times of his and many people’s emergency crisises and episodes. It’s not worth it to you to at least use your position of being able to reach so many people who you could help understand that the entire state and this countys mental health services are in need of funding and votes. Instead you are using it to mock not just one person struggling with their mental illness but many of them. Il surprises me that the police didn’t enlighten you
Maybe they did but you just felt like it might not fit the theme of your little mean and ignorant sounding story.