Police chief says the increase is due to more policing, better statistics

By Paul R. Huard for Ashland.news

Changes in reporting policy, more police on the streets, and more arrests by officers led to a significant statistical increase in incidents regarded as uses of force by the Ashland Police Department, but the spike in stats is no cause for alarm, police Chief Tighe O’Meara said Monday.

O’Meara told City Council members that the reported increase is the result of efforts to indicate clearly how city police officers carry out their duties.

“We’re trying to capture more data to more accurately reflect contentious interactions between members of the Ashland Police Department and members of the community,” O’Meara told the council during its study session.

A report submitted to the council covered incidents during the calendar year 2024. The council requires an annual report on use of force by the police department.

According to the report, there were 43 incidents that met the definition of use-of-force, according to the department’s policies during 2024. This was a sharp increase over the 11 incidents reported during the previous year — about a 291% increase statistically.

During 2024, all 43 incidents involved subjects who were identified as white. Thirty of the use-of-force subjects were males, and 13 were females, the report states.

Starting in 2024, the department adjusted policy and procedure regarding what constitutes a reportable use of force incident. Before then, if an officer displayed a weapon but did not use it, the incident was not regarded as a use of force.

After review by the department’s use-of-force review board, such incidents were deemed to be within policy, the report states.

The report also says that 717 people were jailed during 2024 after arrests by city police, up from 637 during 2023.

According to the report, 645 people were jailed after arrests in 2022 and 557 people were jailed in 2021 – roughly an 8.7% growth annually in jailings during the four-year period. The percentage of increase in jailings between last year and 2023 is about 12.5%.

“I would certainly want this to be something that I and everybody else keep an eye on in the coming years, but I’m not really alarmed by this jump from 11 to 43,” O’Meara said during the meeting.

According to the written report, a little more than half of the use-of-force incidents involved what police call “empty-handed techniques” such as control holds or empty-handed strikes that did not involve a weapon. It also states that 21 of the 43 incidents involved the use of a combination of weapons such as TASERs, pepper spray, a less-than-lethal shotgun round, and officers’ firearms.

During an interview after Monday’s presentation to the council, O’Meara said the report reflects an attempt to gather more accurate information about policing in Ashland.

“Stuff that previously was not captured is being captured now, which is the better way to do it, because it more accurately paints a picture of contentious interactions between police officers and members of the community,” O’Meara said.

“We also have more arrests than we had, so that’s going to lead to more physical confrontations, and our staffing is coming back, which is going to lead to more proactive policing,” O’Meara continued. “So, I’m not overly concerned about this spike, because as of this year, we are looking at the data differently in a more inclusive way than we have in the past.”

In addition, what O’Meara called in the report “a lack of staffing” likely led to a decrease in “proactive policing.”

“As staffing has increased and departmental procedures have increased reporting requirements, the number of incidents has increased,” O’Meara wrote in the report.

“During 2020-21, we went down to 19 officers,” O’Meara said during the interview. “We could barely keep the patrol function going. We’ve been building back since.”

Presently, the force has many as 27 officers operationally available, O’Meara said.

The complete report is available at ashlandor.portal.civicclerk.com/event/781/files/report/749.

Email Paul R. Huard at [email protected].