A 21-year-old Penngrove man was tased early last Friday after police say he climbed on top of a Petaluma officer and struck him in the head during a struggle that began when he refused to get out of the roadway near the Twin Oaks Tavern. Cesar Rodriguez-Macias was booked into custody on charges including assaulting an officer, resisting officers and violating the terms of his pretrial release.
According to KRON4, the encounter started around 2 a.m. last Friday on Old Redwood Highway near the tavern in Penngrove, after a motorist reported seeing a man pushing a shopping cart in the roadway in the dark. Petaluma police officers found Rodriguez-Macias on the road and say he refused to move despite being nearly struck by passing vehicles, according to Petaluma PD. The stretch of highway has drawn safety scrutiny before: a Sonoma County infrastructure study found that traffic through Penngrove moves at excessive speeds with minimal pedestrian accommodations, a concern that intensified after local safety complaints and a 2022 fatal pedestrian collision in the area.
Foot Chase Ends in a Struggle
When officers tried to take him into custody, Rodriguez-Macias ignored commands to stop and fled on foot, police said. An officer eventually caught up with him, and police allege that during the ensuing altercation, Rodriguez-Macias got on top of the officer and hit him in the head. A second officer then deployed a Taser to stop the attack, per the same account from police.
The confrontation played out just outside the Twin Oaks Tavern, a landmark that has anchored that stretch of road since 1924, when it opened as a prohibition-era roadhouse and gas station serving travelers between Petaluma and Cotati, according to Patch.
Why Petaluma Officers Responded Outside City Limits
Penngrove is unincorporated, meaning primary policing authority there belongs to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, though Petaluma officers routinely assist on emergency calls along shared border corridors, according to the Petaluma Police Department. The department's Field Services Division spreads 40 officers across two patrol platoons to maintain 24-hour coverage, per the City of Petaluma. Petaluma also runs a non-law-enforcement crisis response option, the Specialized Assistance For Everyone (SAFE) team launched in 2021, which the city says was the first program of its kind deployed by an agency in Sonoma County for community distress calls.
Charges and a Pretrial Violation
Rodriguez-Macias was booked for assaulting an officer and resisting officers, police said, along with violating the terms of his pretrial release. Under California Penal Code Section 243(c)(2), battery against a peace officer that results in injury is a wobbler offense punishable by up to three years in state prison and fines as high as $10,000, according to Eisner Gorin LLP. A related charge, resisting an executive officer through physical force under Penal Code Section 69, is also a wobbler carrying up to three years in state prison or up to a year in county jail, per the same legal source.
The pretrial violation stems from Sonoma County Probation's Pretrial Services program, which has used a validated risk-assessment tool to monitor defendants awaiting trial without cash bail since it launched in 2015 and expanded under a 2020 state pilot, according to the Sonoma County Probation Department. Under county policy, a new criminal referral or a breach of release conditions prompts probation officers to recommend that a court modify or terminate a defendant's pretrial release status, the department says.
Rodriguez-Macias was booked into the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility in Santa Rosa, which serves as the county's central booking and detention center for adult male arrestees, according to the Sonoma County Probation Department.
