Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 30, 1993 TAG: 9303300294
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
She's a Richmond cop, one of seven assigned to riding a horse on routine patrol in that city. Riding a horse in city traffic, on city streets, is risky enough on dry pavement. Riding on wet asphalt is tempting fate.
Dean's insights into mounted police work are the sort the Roanoke Police Department needs to hear before it chooses to add a small mounted unit to its force - or decides not to.
Pushing the idea are members of Downtown Roanoke Inc., a merchants' group. They say they'll create a nonprofit fund-raising organization to support the mounted police. They'll get horses, stable space and tack donated. The city's end of the deal would be salaries, police equipment, uniforms and training.
Nothing is yet decided.
But the pros and cons of mounted police, long debated in lots of cities, are fairly obvious.
The primary benefit, says Dean, may be the public relations. Everywhere she goes in Richmond, she's stopped by pedestrians who want to pet the horse, to ask about the horse and to meet the officer on the horse.
Richmond police don't recruit mounted officers. Only cops who've been on duty for a year can even apply to the mounted unit.
"All they ask is that you know the front end from the back end," said Dean, bringing to mind another perk of having mounted police.
Stable manure is very popular with Richmond gardeners. It's free.
All they need to get their own fertile pile of road apples is to ask the full-time farrier who works at the Richmond police stable, shoeing and grooming the horses.
Some of that work falls to the cops, and the last officer gone in the afternoon feeds the horses. Richmond's police horses work the streets only by daylight.
It can be scary. Horses can get spooked by manhole covers underfoot or by traffic lights overhead.
"We have one horse who can't handle 18-wheelers on the left," said Dean. "On the right? No problem."
And another Richmond police horse freaks out at the sight of blue-and-white Browning-Ferris garbage trucks - no other trucks seem to bother it.
It leaves the officer at the wheel a lot to think about.
"A lot of people think when you go down to mounted police, you've slipped to the level of a meter maid," said Dean. "But we're basically regular police officers. We can respond to any calls that come in, unless they're hazardous."
Horses run faster than human officers and can get into places that police cars can't. High in the saddle, cops carry radios and guns.
But the basic rule for mounted police is to stay in the saddle.
"We're really never supposed to get off the horse unless we have a safe place to tie him, away from vehicle and pedestrian traffic," said Dean.
That, in a downtown, is a rare find. In short, a cop on a horse may be a neat way to win the heart of the common folk, but a lousy way to catch the common thief.
by CNB