Part I: Shots Fired! Shots Fired! Ashland Deputies Train for the Unthinkable
ASHLAND COUNTY — The rapid fire of live gunfire echoed across the Ashland Police Division gun range on Friday as deputies hurled themselves behind vehicles, fired through windshields, and sprinted from cover to cover. It wasn’t just another day at the range. This was High-Risk Law Enforcement Encounters Training — a hands-on course designed to replicate the chaos, confusion, and raw danger of real ambushes.
“Almost 100 officers have been shot this year alone,” explained Deputy Curtis Hall, Deputy Dog Warden and certified instructor. “We had to make some changes to our training. The body can’t go where the mind hasn’t been. If we want our deputies to survive, we have to put them into scenarios as close to the real thing as possible.”
This year, thanks to donations from HOP Armament, Gibbs Towing, and Glass Doctor, the training took on a gritty realism rarely seen outside tactical academies. Deputies fired many of the 10,000 donated rounds, pierced many of the 20 donated windshields, and filled two salvaged cars supplied by Gibbs Towing with holes.
The cars, needless to say, won’t be much good to anyone anymore. After the training, they looked like something out of an FBI standoff with gangsters from the 1940s and ’50s — doors shredded, windshields spider-webbed, bodies riddled with bullet holes.
“Here we’re shooting through windshields, around vehicles, inside vehicles,” said Deputy Forsthoefel. “Ninety percent of our shift is spent in or around cars. We need to know what works, what doesn’t, and how to react under fire.”
Even Sheriff Kurt J. Schneider, a 31-year veteran, admitted he’d never trained like this before.
“In all my years, I’ve never shot through a windshield in training,” Schneider said. “But these are the scenarios deputies face today — traffic stops gone wrong, suspects waiting in ambush, an officer sitting in a cruiser when shots ring out. We’d be irresponsible not to prepare for it.”
The atmosphere wasn’t all tension. Deputies ribbed each other, tossed good-natured trash talk, and pushed one another to shoot faster, sharper, and smarter. But beneath the jokes was a clear seriousness: this training could save their lives.
See Part Two Tomorrow
