Rohnert Park police report lower property crime, small rises in intimidation and reported hate incidents

Rohnert Park — The city’s Department of Public Safety told the City Council on March 24 that overall property crime fell in 2025 while the way crimes are counted changed after the department moved from UCR to NIBRS reporting.

Chief (public safety) presented the annual Scribe report and said the switch to NIBRS — which records every offense listed on a report rather than only the top charge — produced a more detailed picture of crime. "Property crimes overall are down 16%," the chief said, and added that larceny remained the most-reported offense with 358 incidents last year. He also noted a slight rise in crimes against persons.

Why the numbers shifted: the chief told council members that part of the change reflects experience and training among officers and the fact that NIBRS may preserve multiple charges from a single incident. "NIBRS is different," he said. "Every crime code that goes on the arrest sheet or the report is reported to NIBRS. So one call could actually have five different crimes associated with it." Council members pressed for clarification about overlapping charges and whether increases in some categories reflected more incidents or more complete reporting.

The department also reported a year-to-year increase in recorded "intimidation" offenses and a small rise in reported hate crimes. The chief said much of the intimidation increase was driven by charges for threatening law enforcement (PC 69) and by more careful reporting and follow-up: "We're seeing more people challenging and threatening law enforcement," he said. On hate crimes he said the incidents were isolated and often resulted from brief confrontations that were later recorded as bias incidents.

On use-of-force and transparency, the department reported that show-of-force occurred in 0.07% of calls for service and use-of-force in 0.04%. "During 2025, we did not — we were not forced to use less-lethal or deadly force during the year," the chief told the council. The presentation noted 16 uses of force on people with Rohnert Park addresses and 22 uses on nonresidents; most uses were takedowns or taser deployments and there were no lethal-force incidents in 2025.

Council members asked about distracted driving enforcement, the local share of citation revenue, and demographic patterns in traffic stops. The chief said the city issues many cell-phone-related citations and runs a focused distracted-driving enforcement month; he also noted that most fine revenue does not remain with the city, a state policy intended to avoid policing-for-profit concerns.

What’s next: staff said the department will post the full reports and explanatory videos on the city’s transparency page and the council pressed for better public explanation of how counts are defined and why some categories increased. The council did not take formal action beyond the receipt of the reports.