Brazen thieves target Sonoma County cannabis dispensaries on consecutive nights. Is this a new trend?

Shortly before 3 a.m., a small team arrives in expensive cars — at least one Maserati and a Mercedes. They kill the engines in a darkened parking lot. The participants emerge, masked and hooded. They approach the building and begin to force their way in.

It happened on consecutive nights in Sonoma County this week. Early Tuesday morning at Doobie Nights in Santa Rosa, and early Wednesday morning at Down Under Industries in Petaluma, a brazen gang of thieves hit the two cannabis dispensaries.

They are among eight or more large-scale weed burglary or robbery incidents to hit the county since Dec. 1, a pattern that has local cannabis purveyors concerned and mobilized.

“We’re gonna beef up security,” said Damon Crain, co-owner of Doobie Nights. “It’ll be like a third-world country. We’ll have giant gates over the windows.”

The Petaluma Police Department, which assisted with the Down Under break-in response though it occurred outside of city limits, said there is evidence to link the two most recent crimes. It’s unclear whether those burglaries are related to previous events.

The Santa Rosa thefts are part of an active and open investigation, according to Santa Rosa Chief of Police John Cregan, and have been assigned to a property crimes detective as a “priority case.” The Santa Rosa Police Department will be working with agencies in other jurisdictions to assess the pattern.

“My experience as a police officer is, when you see a spree of crimes occurring, experience tells you they’re often related,” Cregan said. “But we have to look at the facts of each case.”

Laniakea Evans, owner of 365 Recreational Cannabis in Santa Rosa — one of several weed dispensaries that have been victimized — has seen enough to be convinced.

“It’s the same people,” Evans said. “The Sonoma County Cannabis Alliance (a collaborative trade group), we’ve all met together, talked about this, shared screen shots. And these are the same people.”

At least six different county dispensaries have been targeted in recent weeks, said Santa Rosa City Council member Eddie Alvarez, an owner of The Hook Dispensary in Santa Rosa. His establishment was one of them. Flora Terra was hit twice, according to Alvarez, and SOG Army once. Evans confirmed the incident at 365 Recreational, and a marijuana delivery driver was robbed at gunpoint Dec. 1 on Piner Road, several blocks from Flora Terra.

Dispensaries are particularly attractive targets. They tend to work with a lot of cash — both because of customer preference and habit, and they often find it harder to use traditional banking, due to federal laws that still count marijuana as a highly restricted Schedule I drug.

And as Crain noted, burglaries of high-value items, including jewelry and iPhones, have generally been on the rise in Sonoma County and elsewhere. It’s also true that because of marijuana’s long history as a criminalized street drug, there are well-established distribution channels outside of legal dispensaries.

And perhaps some newer distribution channels. Crain pointed to the “sesh” trade, the term for unlicensed cannabis sales organized almost like pop-ups.

“Our product is probably being sold this weekend,” he said.

With cannabis burglaries trending, local purveyors are banding together to strategize. Monday night, the Sonoma County Cannabis Alliance hosted a Zoom meeting for dispensary owners to discuss security issues.

Industry stakeholders are working on organizing another in-person meeting, and Cregan plans to be there. He has advice to offer the business owners. He also knows he will be addressing a common view in the industry that law enforcement assigns a low priority to the investigation of cannabis-related crimes.

“So far, the response has been fairly slow. Interest is almost nil,” Crain said Wednesday. “In the words someone passed along to me, ‘That’s the cost of us doing business.’ Which is interesting, because we pay a lot of taxes.”

Cregan pushed back against the perception that his department, or the dispatchers they work with, would treat some industries better than others.

“In Sonoma County, we’ve welcomed the cannabis industry,” Cregan said. “Our city leaders have been receptive, and that trickles down to law enforcement. And have we seen crime increases due to cannabis? The truth is, we haven’t.”

The problem is more general, the police chief said. He cited “historic” staffing issues at the police department, which have occurred as calls for service have climbed upward. The stretched department sometimes has to prioritize violent crimes over property crimes.

As for security measures, Crain said Doobie Nights has installed a grate on the back door of the business and will do the same on the front door. He’s also looking into putting a chain gate across the parking lot entrance at night. Some of the business owners are talking about pooling funds to team up on overnight camera monitoring and patrols, Crain said.

“Whatever we can do to be proactive and work together,” he said. “By the time they put a crowbar to my door, they were in within 30 seconds.”

Watching security footage all night long is a lot of labor, but it can pay off. Crain said the owner of Down Under Industries was monitoring his cameras Tuesday night, and it helped to thwart the crime.

Just after 2:45 a.m. Wednesday, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office and Petaluma Police Department were alerted to the burglary in progress on Ely Road. As officers approached the scene, several vehicles exited the area. Three of them matched the cars caught on the Doobie Nights cameras, according to Petaluma police.

After a pursuit, the Petaluma officers wound up cornering one of the cars, a white Mercedes, when it hit the dead end at the south end of Silveira Ranch Road in Novato. The driver plowed through a cattle fence, then a chain-link fence before crashing into a solar panel array. The occupants of the vehicle ran, but were apprehended with the help of California Highway Patrol air support.

Joshua Hawkins-Butler, 29, and Shawntanique Blocker, 31, both of Oakland, and David Hill III, 18, of San Pablo were booked into the Sonoma County jail on charges of evading with disregard for safety, conspiracy, resisting arrest and possession of burglary tools.

There were no such arrests Monday night.

Shortly before 3 a.m. Tuesday, a white Maserati, white Honda Civic and black Mercedes pulled into the Doobie Nights lot. At least seven suspects gained access through an emergency side door and broke through as many as seven interior doors to reach the dispensary’s various rooms.

Crain and his co-owner both received alarm notifications on their phones, but were fast asleep and did not respond. By the time the Santa Rosa Police Department was notified at 3:15 a.m., Crain said, the thieves were gone.

Despite the high-end cars and the swift exit, this was no expert operation, according to Crain.

The perpetrators ignored electronics like computers, and left behind pipes and bongs worth more than the products they took. At one point, one of them was rummaging through drawers and looked up to see a small safe. They ditched the products in favor of the safe, which proved to be empty.

Still, Crain estimates Doobie Nights is out somewhere between $45,000 and $50,000 in cash and merchandise. Retail goods account for about $30,000 of that, and would have had a street value of more than $60,000, he said. The dispensary is insured.

It’s another hit for an industry that is struggling to find stable footing amid legal restrictions, heavy taxation and competition from non-sanctioned growers and distributors.

That’s especially true for Crain, whose house burned in the Tubbs Fire in 2017. He took six months off of managing Doobie Nights to rebuild, but had to return to help keep the business afloat.

“Our revenue has gone down almost 15% every year,” he said. “Now I’m back at the business, working for free, not rebuilding my house. Because I have to do that or we will go out of business. I’m living in an RV for five years. It’s a snowball effect.”

Press Democrat reporter Andrew Graham also contributed to this story. You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.