Calamus, Iowa, man gets probation in threat case
CLINTON, Iowa — A judge sentenced Jeffrey Soboroff to probation Thursday for threatening to dump thorazine into the Calamus, Iowa, water supply, strongly warning him to stay out of trouble or face prison.
But the order left the city’s public works manager unconvinced that Soboroff will stop irritating Calamus residents.
“He’s going to be back, and he’s going to be worse than ever,” Duane Levien said after Thursday’s hearing in Clinton County District Court.
Soboroff, 57, of Calamus was convicted by a jury last month on one count of threats for suggesting on his Web site that he would dump 500 pounds of the drug thorazine into the city’s water supply. The Web posting also featured a photo of the city’s water tower.
Soboroff faced a maximum of five years in prison, but Judge J. Hobart Darbyshire suspended the sentence and placed Soboroff on two years of probation. Darbyshire admonished that any failure to comply with the terms of probation would result in a “very short” probation revocation hearing.
“You will go to prison, and you will lose everything at that point, Jeff,” Darbyshire told Soboroff.
Soboroff also was ordered to pay $226.34 in restitution to the city of Calamus to cover the expense of draining the water tower and flushing out the water system after Levien was made aware of the threat in November. Thorazine is a psychotropic drug often used to treat schizophrenia and its side-effects can be serious, a pharmacist testified in the trial.
Clinton County Attorney Mike Wolf had recommended Soboroff be sent to the Iowa Department of Corrections’ Medical and Classification Center at Oakdale to evaluate his mental health, then the court could revisit his sentence.
Soboroff’s attorney, William Vilmont, said while people in Calamus may want Soboroff in prison because of repeated run-ins with residents, prison was not likely to help Soboroff or deter him from erratic behavior. Vilmont said he believed educational programming and close monitoring would be more appropriate.
Darbyshire reminded Soboroff that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Americans are highly sensitive to perceived threats of terrorism and said people of Calamus had the right to be frightened by the threat.
But Darbyshire said they also didn’t know Soboroff well enough to know his history of mental health problems and that his criminal past includes multiple convictions or guilty pleas to charges of harassment but no history of violence.
Darbyshire said the man has difficulty relating to most people.
“It doesn’t mean we can put him in prison and throw away the key,” Darbyshire said.
During the hearing, Soboroff responded to Darbyshire’s direct questioning and said the threat was part of a fictional story intended to “lampoon” what he observed to be a racist attitude among some town residents. While he said he didn’t understand why anyone would have taken his story as a serious threat, Soboroff apologized for his actions.
“I’m sorry that people were afraid,” he said. “I didn’t mean to alarm them.”
Vilmont told Soboroff to be quiet several times during the hearing, and even Darbyshire once told him to “shut up.”
Soboroff still faces trial on three counts of harassment and one felony count of extortion stemming from phone calls he allegedly made after returning home from court on the first day of his trial last month. Soboroff allegedly told one Calamus woman he would take photos of her 14-year-old daughter and post them on the Internet unless she paid him $400.
He also faces a misdemeanor charge of possession of drug paraphernalia stemming from a pipe police allegedly found while conducting a search of his home when he was arrested on the threat charge in November, Wolf said.
Steven Martens can be contacted at (563) 659-2595 or smartens@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.