Deputies in Guerneville are starting far fewer traffic stops, foot patrols and security checks on their own this year than they did in 2025, while calls from the public have held steady, according to a Wine Country Gazette review of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office’s public event data.
From Jan. 1 through Oct. 10, deputies initiated 709 events at Guerneville locations, down from 1,695 over the same stretch of 2025, a 58% drop. Calls to dispatch from Guerneville barely moved: 1,594 this year and 1,595 last year.
The figures come days before the Sheriff’s Office holds a community meeting on quality-of-life and public-safety concerns in downtown Guerneville, 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14, at Rio Nido Station, 14770 Rio Nido Road. Deputies plan to “share what we’re seeing in the area, discuss how the Sheriff’s Office is responding,” the office said in its announcement. A deputy division director for homelessness services from the county Department of Health Services will also attend.
What the data counts
The Sheriff’s Office posts its dispatch events on the county’s open-data portal and tags each one by source: a call to the dispatch center, or “an event initiated by a deputy during the course of their work.” Deputy-initiated events include traffic stops, foot patrols, security checks and checks on suspicious people or vehicles.
The data count events, not crimes. Each event is listed at the closest intersection to where it was reported, and this review counted those the data place in Guerneville. The office leaves out some categories under the California Public Records Act, including sex crimes, domestic violence and mental-health holds, along with canceled events.
A surge in 2025
Deputy-initiated events in Guerneville totaled 653 from Jan. 1 to Oct. 10, 2023, and 796 over the same period in 2024, before more than doubling in 2025. This year’s 709 is 11% below 2024.
The 2025 jump began in May. During the first week of that month, deputies logged one to seven self-initiated events a day in Guerneville. From May 9 on, the daily count reached 10 or more on every day of the month but one. Deputies initiated 415 events in May 2025 and 397 in June. In 2024, no month topped 140.
The day before the jump, on May 8, 2025, Sheriff Eddie Engram spoke to the Lower Russian River Municipal Advisory Council. Business owners at the meeting reported increased drug activity downtown, overdoses and assaults, and a “lack of consistent enforcement presence,” according to the meeting’s draft minutes. Engram “committed to following up with the Guerneville substation,” the minutes say.
The event data don’t record why deputy activity rose in 2025 or why it fell this year.
Other river towns
Countywide, deputy-initiated activity fell 7.5% from Jan. 1 to Oct. 10, from 22,612 events in 2025 to 20,926 this year.
Two nearby river communities show the Guerneville pattern on a smaller scale. In Rio Nido, calls rose from 182 to 249 while deputy-initiated events fell from 108 to 43. In Monte Rio, calls held nearly even, at 437 last year and 445 this year, while deputy-initiated events fell from 271 to 129.
The summer gap
In Guerneville, the gap is widest in the summer, the river’s busy season. From June through September, deputies initiated 321 events in Guerneville, down from 819 a year earlier. Foot patrols fell from 104 to seven, and security checks fell from 240 to 61.
Calls from the public over those four months went the other way, rising 17%, from 670 to 786.