While the number of arrests increased, crime fell and community engagement reached unprecedented levels in 2025, Sheriff Brad Pope said in the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office Annual Report. Presenting the findings to the Lyon County Commission on Jan. 15, Pope attributed the drop in crime to LCSO’s increased emphasis on traffic enforcement, a strategy he believes reduces crime by creating a more noticeable law enforcement presence in the community. “It's my philosophy that crime suppression and visibility all starts with traffic stops,” Pope said. “Nearly every crime committed in Lyon County is in relation to a vehicle. So, when somebody is stealing property, burglarizing an area, they have to get there somehow.”
During the meeting, Pope walked the commissioners through the report page by page, highlighting crime statistics and deputy response times.
The report states that traffic stops have more than doubled since 2022, from 4,171 in 2022 to 10,960 last year, while increasing every year.
The biggest increase in traffic stops over that period has come in the Dayton patrol area, from 1,009 in 2022 to 4,341 in 2025. In Fernley, the number of traffic stops has gone from 1,121 in 2022 to 2,921 in 2025.
“You're going to see those crime stats have gone down, and I believe it's in direct correlation with the amount of traffic stops and visibility that is in our communities,” Pope said.
Pope said traffic is the most common complaint the Sheriff’s Office receives, particularly on U.S. 50. In response, he said they made a pledge to increase the number of stops on that highway. “However, I would say looking at this data and looking at the fatal accidents that continue to happen, it's not an enforcement issue, it's an engineering issue, and we're working close with the Nevada Department of Transportation to get some of those solutions fixed,” he said.
Much of that increased patrol, Pope said, is made possible by state grants that pay deputies overtime for traffic enforcement. “It's a great partnership. We get the benefit of more visibility, more traffic stops, at zero cost to us with overtime,” Pope said. “And you can see a lot of the breakdown of what they've had there. About one third of our DUI arrests come from this.”
The result, Pope said, is that while DUI and drug arrests have increased dramatically, the number of crimes such as burglaries, larcenies and robberies have decreased. Domestic battery and child abuse or endangerment arrests have also increased, but Pope said the number of calls has not. He attributed that to better training for deputies.
“We've focused our training on what actually constitutes domestic battery and what doesn't,” Pope said. “Arrests are mandatory, and you see the substantial increase. The calls for service for domestic battery haven't necessarily gone up, but our arrests have.”
Pope also said the rising number of child abuse and endangerment arrests is not the result of more incidents, but more enforcement. “It’s just due to the aggressive nature of our deputies,” he said. “The philosophy is when in doubt, make an arrest.”
Pope said drug arrests are increasing as the special investigations unit gets better trained and K9s get more training and experience. He also pointed out that the drug arrests in the report are only those that are arrests specifically for drugs. “But drugs are involved in, I would say, 80 to 90 percent of all of our arrests,” he said.
Lyon County dispatch handles calls for service for the Sheriff’s Office, all four fire departments in the county and the Yerington Police Department. Altogether, Pope said dispatch received 55,965 calls for service in 2025, 49,293 were calls for service by LCSO. There were also 3,693 for North Lyon Fire, 4,128 for Central Lyon Fire, 1,046 for Mason Valley Fire and 239 for the Smith Valley Fire Department.
Pope said response times continue to drop, particularly for Priority One calls, which are when someone’s safety is in immediate danger. The average response time for a Priority One call in Fernley dropped from 6 minutes, 40 seconds in 2024 to 5 minutes, 45 seconds last year, continuing the trend that began in 2023 with a drop from 23 minutes, 30 seconds, when deputies were often responding from Silver Springs.
Aside from restructuring command areas so that deputies in Fernley are only assigned to Fernley, Pope said another reason for the reduction is that dispatchers now triage calls. As an example, Pope said a fight in progress is a Priority One call, so deputies respond immediately, but if a fight is reported after the fact, it’s no longer Priority One.
“It's not uncommon for somebody to report a fight four days later and decide they want to file charges,” Pope said. “Obviously we're not going lights and sirens to a fight that happened four days ago, so triaging calls is a big step of that.”
In addition to the patrol statistics, Pope also touted the success of the School Resource Officers and highlighted the work of the deputies in the K9 unit, the jail, Sheriff’s Search and Rescue volunteers, the Volunteers in Policing unit and the Mobile Outreach Safety Team (MOST).
Commissioner Tammi Hendrix said deputies attending Community Advisory Board meetings and the presence of deputies and K9s at public events has improved the relationship between law enforcement and the community.
“Our senior deputies that have been here for quite a long time say that they've never been treated as well in the community as they are now, so to me, our relationship is improving daily. Especially our senior guys in Fernley say they go into the store and people tell them thank you. That’s never happened, so they're excited too.”
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