The Ashland City Police Department does many things to help ensure the safety of not only the people of Ashland, but also college kids, visitors, and its own officers. 

It is equipped with 30 full-time officers and one part-time officer. These officers are constantly patrolling the streets to keep crime rates low. 

In the cruisers, the body cams are the ones that record audio. All the departments’ cruisers have become fully equipped to abide by the new policies. These updates are here to help the police department have transparency with the public. 

When a citizen reports an incident with an officer, these cameras will show exactly what happened during the encounter. The cameras record not only video, but audio as well. 

The public helps the department with numerous things, but mostly with concerns about traffic and drugs issues.  

Based on the complaints, the department targets the areas with the most violations. These areas tend to have lots of wrecks or speeding violations while others have drug issues. Civilians are also able to help the department by volunteering. In the past, the department had a volunteer program with the public. Chief Lay is eager to get this program up and running again.  

Lay elaborated on what it takes to be a sworn in officer by discussing things like making sure officers know their policies, responding to calls quickly (within four to six minutes), and usually sacrificing their time on their scheduled days off to work on things other than patrol.  

While their jurisdiction is only in city limits, the City Police Department has many different officers specializing in many different roles. For example, the city has one officer fully devoted to the safety of Ashland Schools. He is stationed at the high school throughout the school year, and he goes back on patrol in the summer months. 

There are also two detectives fully devoted to narcotics that work hand and hand with Ashland County Sheriff’s Department. They are equipped with a MX908 machine to expedite the process of testing for drugs. 

Ashland County Sheriff’s Office investigates, protects, and patrols all 33 x 16 miles of Ashland County. Not only do they work closely with Ashland City Police, but they are members of numerous task forces in the neighboring areas, and they work with the State Highway Patrol of Ohio.  

The department is typically equipped with 105 sworn in officers and four civilian 911 dispatchers. They can hold up to 134 criminals on site and are not scared to find more room if they need to.  

 “We know what the law is, and we do everything here to support the charges that we submit. We can back up everything that we do and when it comes time to go to court, we take all of that with us,” Sheriff Risner said. 

The Sheriff’s office holds the 911 dispatch center for the area. All four civilians have at least six months of training to make sure they can handle the difficult realities of the job. Each one has its own station with seven monitors, three of which show the others stuff in case one of them needs assistance with a call. As well as they have a therapy dog on site to help throughout the day.  This group of devoted workers help make Ashland a safe place for all. 

 “We’re proud we do have a safe community,” Risner said.  

Not only does the Sheriff’s office work with other offices and the City Police Department, but they also work with prosecutors when it becomes time for court. The officers know what the laws are to follow while the prosecutors know how to charge offenders.  

“If you break the law in this county, and we respond, when we catch you. We’re going to charge you, [and] probably put you in jail. That’s the way it is,” Risner said. 

Officer Randy Wood is highly confident in the safety of Ashland County. He said “[If I was] not in uniform, just a regular citizen wearing regular clothes and nobody would know who I was, I would feel comfortable walking anywhere in this county, [and] the city of Ashland. I can’t say that about some areas.” 

Both the Ashland City Police Department and the Ashland County Sheriff’s department are proud of the safe area they have made for all. They will continue to work diligently to keep the area safe.