ASHLAND — What does a typical shift look like for an Ashland Police officer?
I spent 12 hours over two days with a couple of young Ashland Police officers in January to get a sense.
On the first shift, there were guns, drugs and some excitement on South Street.
Below are my notes, organized in chronological order, edited only for clarity.
Jan. 14 and 15
“Night” shift (6 p.m. to 6 a.m.) with Officer Adam Wolbert. Age: 28. I rode with Wolbert from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.
Wolbert was considered “rove” during that particular shift, meaning he was able to patrol anywhere within Ashland’s city limits. The other patrol areas are divided by north and south sectors of the city.
9 p.m.
At 8:48 p.m., Lt. Aaron Kline pulled over a man driving a Honda Civic for expired plates. Found marijuana, some dabs and a loaded .38 revolver. (A “dab” is a highly concentrated form of marijuana.) Felony arrest. We arrived shortly after 9 p.m. Kline showed me the handgun, which at the time had been placed in a small cardboard box as evidence.
“More guns and drugs off the streets,” Kline said.
10 p.m.
Code 40 call.
“Code 40 means ‘suspected gun involved,’” Wolbert said, accelerating toward South Street.
There was a call about a guy with a gun in an apartment or alley on South Street. Excitement. Three officers respond. Two of them had their assault rifles drawn, jogging carefully down the alley, looking, pointing down alleys.
Wolbert, who parked on the west end of South Street, learned the incident happened more on the east end of the street. He began jogging back to his vehicle. I joined, not wanting to be the reason we missed anything.
When we got to the new spot, Wolbert told me to “hang back until we figure out what’s going on.”
From inside the vehicle, I observed two men cuffed outside in the winter weather. One of them had no shoes on. Neither had coats. Hatchet, knife and gun confiscated for a period as police figured out what was happening. The man with the gun had a CCW. There was no imminent threat, so Wolbert signaled I could come outside.
He told me police were going to perform a search of a vacant apartment, where the two cuffed men said they heard a noise and thought someone had been. Police searched and found nothing suspicious. Nails, debris, etc. Everyone was let go after a while.
Later I learned the call came from a worker at one of the bars on South Street. She had been walking to her car after a shift when one of the guys who had come outside with a gun warned her there might be a prowler with a gun in the alleys.
Frightened, she called 9-1-1.
10:50 p.m.
Traffic stop for running a red light on Main Street. Given a warning.
(The guy made sure the police officer knew he was the owner of a local pizza joint. He was delivering a pizza.)
11 p.m.
Stopped a guy going 37 mph in a 25 zone. It was near Ashland University on Claremont Avenue. The guy thought he was going 30. Just got off work from Hedstrom in town. Given a warning.
11:15 p.m.
Wolbert stopped a man driving 40 in a 25, near Burger King on Claremont Avenue. The driver, 40, was coming from Snow Trails. Ticket given at 11:26 p.m. He ended up being a sheriff’s deputy from a nearby county.
Wolbert found this out only after he handed him a citation. The man’s badge had been resting on his dash.
“We’re able to use discretion on speeding tickets. I didn’t know he was a deputy, but I probably would have handed him a ticket anyway.”
The man said he didn’t know the speed zone changed from 35 to 25.
11:39 p.m.
We helped other officers who made a traffic stop in the Advance Auto parking lot off Claremont Avenue. The driver had been drinking a bit. Officers had performed a field sobriety test. He passed it.
The driver let officers know of a handgun he had in his center console. He did not have a CCW, so charges were likely to be filed, officers said.
The gun was confiscated.
12:30 a.m.
Wolbert parked on Hillcrest facing west. He tuned the radar using a tuning fork. He stopped to see if anyone would speed down the road. The speed limit is 35.
He’s not hopeful he’ll see anyone speeding. Nevertheless, having a presence in a neighborhood is sometimes enough to prevent crime, or sometimes witness it.
“We try to get into the neighborhoods, especially at night,” Wolbert said.
He told me a story about one of the lieutenants who found someone busting into a door in one of the neighborhoods while on patrol. It’s rare to catch someone in the act, he said.
Also, there was a house in an affluent neighborhood that police found kilos of cocaine in. It was a place for drug trafficking. A tipster from the neighborhood let them know of frequent in and outs to the house.
“So we’re looking for prowlers. But you could sit on a street for an hour and not see one car. And on Claremont you see 15. We’ve received complaints about speeding on Sandusky, too,” Wolbert said.
“Do you go sit or patrol?” he asked, rhetorically. “There’s a lot of streets, a lot to look after. We need to get more officers, more eyes.”
We stayed on Hillcrest for 15 minutes. There was one van driving 32 and a car driving 35. Two cars in 15 minutes.
1 a.m.
A young man at the Goasis gas station. He had no place in Ashland to go, trying to get to Wooster.
Police receive a call about him bothering patrons for money and rides inside of the store. When we get there, he was outside, wearing baggy jeans and a puffy jacket. He’s picking up cigarettes off the ground and smoking them with a lighter police officers had in the SUV. His phone is dead.
When Wolbert offers him a charger, he declines because his phone jack is messed up. He bought a cloth face mask with the little money he had left to “keep my face warm.”
It’s cold: 23 degrees and breezy.
Earlier in the day, he received a ride to Ashland from someone in Millersburg.
Police say among themselves: he doesn’t fit the criteria for going to jail or the hospital. There isn’t a homeless shelter in Ashland. His brother, who lives in Ashland, is finally reached. His brother says he does this sort of thing all the time. He’s been around the country doing this.
He has schizophrenia, takes medication. When police asked him when was the last time he took his meds, he said Tuesday. It was early Saturday morning.
The police don’t know what to do. They can’t necessarily leave their patrols to take him to his apartment in Wooster. One of them, however, volunteers to do that.
But management advises the volunteer to coordinate with the Wooster Police Department. When reached, a Wooster officer is familiar with him and his behavior. They agree to meet in New Pittsburg — halfway to Wooster — to pick him up and transport him to his apartment.
This all took about an hour to solve. The whole time the man is shivering and smoking and pacing. At one point he asks the police if he could hang out in the gas station’s car wash station. “I’m cold, man.”
They told him to stay put because it’s private property. Finally, one of the police officers tells him it should be OK for him to hang out in one of the store’s vestibules.
The rest of my time with Wolbert was spent patrolling quiet neighborhoods. Wolbert tells me it’s a “dead night.”
“It’s a ghost town out here,” he said.
In all, Wolbert made six traffic stops during the shift and responded to a number of other calls throughout the night.
This is the first part of a two-part series aimed at documenting a typical shift for an Ashland Police officer. Come back tomorrow for the second and final part.
