The Sebastopol Police Department has been getting some heat recently for, uh, pursuing people who break the law. I know you think that’s their job. But some folks around town think they’re going a little too far.
The Sebastopol Times has gotten several calls about this of late. Most involved concerns about two driving incidents involving Police Chief Sean McDonagh—the first involved a high-speed chase of a motorcyclist, who ultimately spun out on a curve, and the second involved the Chief’s unfortunate head-on contact with some city infrastructure while pursuing a man who was shoplifting from Safeway.
This letter to the Sebastopol City Council captures the tone of the complaints we received:
“I would imagine all of you have had the same response I had when I read about our police chief chasing in his car a man on a bicycle and going down the wrong way of McKinley St with cars having to get out of the way until he hit a lamppost and a fence.
For a non-violent shoplifting crime.
How lucky we all are that no one was hurt.
This is outrageously reckless behavior and shows questionable judgement on the part of the head of our law enforcement.
And a few weeks before...a high speed chase that ended up in a vehicle crash.
This certainly makes me feel less safe on our roads and in our town.
From a concerned citizen,
Cynthia Bradley
At the same time—and this probably isn’t a coincidence—the Sebastopol Police Department's Facebook page has been getting uncharacteristically exciting. Dramatic stories from last week include the guy who was assaulting people and throwing pumpkins at cars (at the end of a long day of mayhem around town), the guy at Ives Park threatening little kids with a screwdriver, and the homeless woman at Starbucks who threatened to murder all the baristas.
Seriously. All in one week.
The Sebastopol Times dropped by the police station to talk with Police Chief Sean McDonagh to find out what was going on.
The good news is, it’s not a sudden crime wave. The bad news is it’s always like this.
“It’s business as usual,” McDonagh said, “but it’s been part of my commitment to the community to be more transparent, so I’m putting it out there for people to see it, because if they don’t physically witness these incidents, they wouldn’t be aware of them.”
He said that many of these incidents involve repeat offenders.
Smashing Pumpkins
Case in point, Jesse Kruszynski of greater Sebastopol. He was the motorcyclist involved in the high-speed chase through town on August 31 that didn’t end well — at least not for him.
Here was the police’s description of the event, from their Facebook page:
At approximately 7:30 p.m., 31st August, 2026, Chief McDonagh was patrolling the city of Sebastopol when he observed a motorcyclist traveling in the bicycle lane on South Gravenstein Highway, passing multiple vehicles at a high rate of speed.
Chief McDonagh attempted to initiate a traffic stop; however, the motorcyclist failed to yield and fled, resulting in a vehicle pursuit.
The pursuit traveled northbound on South Gravenstein Highway, northbound on Petaluma Avenue, eastbound on McKinley Street, southbound on Morris Street, westbound on Sebastopol Avenue, and continued onto Bodega Avenue and Highway, northbound onto Ferguson Road, and Mill Station Road.
The pursuit ended at the intersection of Mill Station Road and Occidental Road. Due to his high rate of speed, the motorcyclist was unable to negotiate a bend in the roadway immediately before the intereection with Occidental Road, causing him to crash and be ejected from the motorcycle.
The rider, Jesse Kruszynski, a 45-year-old male from unincorporated Sebastopol, was taken into custody following the collision and transported to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital for observation and any necessary medical treatment. The motorcycle was subsequently seized and towed.
During the incident, the rider reached extremely high speeds and committed numerous traffic violations. His driving behavior was extremely egregious and posed a significant risk to public safety, including to himself, other motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
Kruszynski will be booked on charges including felony evading, driving under the influence, possession of a controlled substance, reckless driving, exceeding 100 mph, failing to stop for red traffic signals, and additional California Vehicle Code violations.
Kruszynski was back, starring in a new episode, in mid-October. Here’s that report:
On October 16, 2026, Sebastopol Police officers arrested 45 year old Jesse Kruszynski of Sebastopol following a series of calls for service spanning approximately three hours and several locations throughout the city.
Kruszynski may be familiar to some members of our community as the suspect previously arrested following a recent motorcycle pursuit here in Sebastopol.
At approximately 1:30 p.m., our dispatch center received a report that Kruszynski was screaming at customers outside a restaurant on Sebastopol Avenue. The business reported that his behavior had also been causing significant problems for them over the preceding weeks. Officers responded but were unable to locate him.
Approximately 30 minutes later, officers were dispatched to Safeway following a report that Kruszynski was pouring alcohol over vehicles. He again left before officers arrived.
About an hour later, dispatch received additional reports that Kruszynski was near Community Market pouring alcohol over vehicles. Shortly afterward, another caller reported that he was near the Main Street intersection punching vehicles. Officers continued searching the area, but Kruszynski again disappeared before they could locate him.
After receiving information that he was heading toward the Joe Rodota Trail, officers began checking that area. Another call then came in reporting that Kruszynski had returned to Community Market and poured beer on a person. He was subsequently seen running toward The Barlow, followed by another report that he was throwing pumpkins at vehicles.
At approximately 4:30 p.m., officers finally located and detained Kruszynski while they investigated the various reported incidents.
During that investigation, officers were approached by individuals who reported that they had been assaulted by Kruszynski. After obtaining statements and the information necessary to establish probable cause, officers placed him under arrest.
During the incident, Kruszynski also made multiple threats against officers, including threats to their lives.
Kruszynski was arrested for battery, Penal Code § 242, and threatening or attempting to deter an executive officer, Penal Code § 69(a). He was subsequently booked into the Sonoma County jail, marking his fifth arrest in just over two months.
As a final display of defiance, Kruszynski defecated in the patrol car while being transported to the jail for booking. Cleaning that up is definitely not something our officers sign up for, nor is cleaning human biohazards something they spend much time training for at the police academy.
McDonagh said of this case, “We were very lucky that on that pumpkin incident day that an off-duty California Highway Patrol sergeant was in the area, and he actually held him for us because he [Kruszynski] kept running from location to location, and by the time we’d get there, he was gone.”
Kruszynski, who is not homeless and who lives in unincorporated Sebastopol, is familiar to the Sebastopol police. “We have had contacts with him in the past,” McDonagh said. “There was nothing for a while, maybe a number of years, and then all of a sudden the bike pursuit and then it’s just been ongoing ever since—multiple contacts a week.”
The Sebastopol Times received a letter from someone familiar with and sympathetic to Kruszynski, suggesting this is clearly a case of mental illness and begging us to write a story on the lack of resources for people with serious mental illness and their families, which is a good suggestion—since all of the incidents discussed in this article could probably be traced to the same issue.
An incident at Ives Park
Two days later, the excitement continued with another repeat offender. Quoting from the police department’s Facebook page:
On October 18, 2026, at approximately 4:30 p.m., Sebastopol Police officers responded to Ives Park following a report that a man had brandished a weapon at two children, ages 8 and 9.
The children reported that the man displayed a screwdriver and threatened them, stating, “Do you want to f*****g get stabbed?”
While Officer Levesque remained at Ives Park obtaining statements from the children, their parents and other witnesses, officers developed a detailed description of the suspect.
Officer Siar immediately began searching the surrounding area and located the suspect, identified as 27-year-old transient resident of Sebastopol. Noah Curry, in the Safeway parking lot. Curry was detained, and officers located a screwdriver in his pocket.
Curry is currently on parole and is known to our officers from many contacts and previous similar incidents in Sebastopol. This arrest marks his fifth custodial arrest in the city this year and he had only been released from jail for three (3) days since our last arrest and parole violation.
Based upon the investigation, Curry was arrested for criminal threats, child endangerment, brandishing a weapon, and violation of parole. He was subsequently booked into the Sonoma County jail, again.
McDonagh said the Sebastopol Police had arrested Curry for a similar incident in Ives Park earlier this year—screaming, swinging a stick at people at Ives and yelling “I’m going to get you, bitch!”—and that he’d been jailed for 60 days. He was released from jail three days before the screwdriver incident in Ives Park.
McDonagh said that the fact that he’d been held for even 60 days was unusual — and likely connected to the fact that he was on parole. “In this day and age in California, 60 days is significant. People we’ve arrested are often released the next day, if not the same day,” he said.
His frustration with this game of catch and release is one of the reasons he decided to start putting these incidents on Facebook.
A threat shuts down Starbucks
And it continued. Again, from the Sebastopol Police Facebook page:
At approximately 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, October 20, 2026, officers from the Sebastopol Police Department responded to the Starbucks on North Gravenstein Highway following a report of a threat involving a firearm.
Sophie Obserstein, 36, of Sebastopol, was reported to have approached the drive thru window and allegedly threatened to shoot a store employee, claiming she had a firearm in her pocket while reaching toward it.
The employee quickly locked the drive-thru window and store doors, moved customers to a safe location inside the business, and contacted Sebastopol Police dispatchers to report what was occurring.
Officer Baldovinos and Sergeant Wong arrived in short order and took Obserstein into custody without further incident. Obserstein was then booked into the Sonoma County Jail for criminal threats and public intoxication.
We commend the employee for her quick thinking and calm response during what would understandably have been a highly stressful situation. Her actions helped protect both herself and the customers inside the store while officers responded.
Obserstein has been taken into custody twice in two days by the Sebastopol Police Department. On October 19th, Obserstein was reported to be causing a disturbance in the vicinity of The Plaza in downtown Sebastopol and also out front of a local business nearby. She was arrested about 3:30 pm by officers for public intoxication and transported to Orenda Center, a detox facility in Santa Rosa.
It turns out that Obserstein did not have a gun, but of course, the baristas at Starbucks had no way of knowing that.
And regarding the pursuit of the Safeway shoplifter
Concerns over the pursuit of 48-year-old Juan Jose Gutierrez Lopez on a charge of shoplifting at Safeway continue to reverberate—mostly concerned, as with Bradley’s letter at the top of this article, with the Chief’s decision to drive at a fast rate of speed backwards on a one-way street and the sense that this was an overreaction to shoplifting at Safeway.
McDonagh said that before he followed the man backwards down McKinley, he checked to make sure there were no cars coming. Some witnesses at Whole Foods and on the downtown plaza continue to say it felt unsafe.
A Safeway employee told the Sebastopol Times that Gutierrez Lopez was a known problem and that he stole from the store on a regular basis. Police say he has an extensive criminal record.
Whether that’s worth an unorthodox (and possibly unsafe) pursuit is a matter of judgment.
Taking a hard line
McDonagh knows there’s been criticism of his approach to policing, but he’s not feeling apologetic.
“This is how I police,” he said. “The city employed me because of what I presented when I interviewed. I don’t change the way I am. This is me. I will continue to police—and our police will continue to police—in that way,” he said.
He wrote to the Sebastopol Times earlier this month expressing the same sentiment.
“I make no apologies for taking a hard line on criminal conduct in the city. It’s long overdue, as the ‘softly, softly’ approach employed in previous years does not and has not worked. I’m addressing the criminal conduct that we receive a LOT of complaints about, in line with the Constitution, laws of the state and agency policy and supporting our soon-to-be fully staffed agency personnel in doing the job that the majority of citizens expect us to do. We can’t have us addressing criminal conduct from a safe space. We must be out there dealing with it head-on. I don’t intend to let the tail wag the dog here.”
Keep up the good work Sebastopol Police Department! Behind you 100%
Luminary Malcolm Gladwell has been making the podcast rounds lately bringing to light the fallacy of the "defund the police" movement. The facts he's presented are as staggering as they are compelling. The big reveal is: "While Berlin has more than double the police officers of Los Angeles, Los Angeles has nearly four times as many people locked up in jail." In essence, there's a surprising correlation of "Less Police; More Incarceration." This is particularly interesting in light of how many of the "defund" people are budding or full blown DSA supporters as well, in spite of the fact that more Socialist Leaning Countries often have more police officers per-capita and far less people incarcerated per capita than we have in the US. The implication is that by having a larger force and one that's decidedly more community-embedded, citizens tend to remain more upright, and law-abiding, and that this, along with the social safety net, actually lowers the incarceration rate, dramatically. There are no-doubt other cultural and societal ills that contribute to America's higher criminality, for sure. But Gladwell's podcasts about the subject are really compelling and worth consideration. Gladwell along with many criminologists are pointing to this data as an echo of Gladwell's core argument: Berlin funnels its public safety budget heavily into upfront staffing (visible neighborhood police presence to deter crime), resulting in a significantly lower overall incarceration rate. Conversely, Los Angeles operates under a system with fewer local police per capita, but heavily funds massive correctional infrastructure to handle the backend influx of arrests. The Berlin vs. Los Angeles study is really remarkable and worth societal study and further discussion. And it's a pretty stern refutation of the Quixotic Fantasies of those advocating for LESS POLICE and eventually "no jails," which is, of course preposterous, and not a notion that's at all supported by historical study and deep dives into modern criminology.