Horse Patrols Help Rein In Lawbreakers

They’re the boys in brown.

Instead of the sharp dark blue uniforms that most Los Angeles Police Department officers sport, members of this special unit opt for brown fur coats.

Instead of riding in black and white patrol cars, these crime fighters would rather trot along their beats in steel shoes.

And instead of stopping at a local diner to catch a bite between radio calls, they satisfy their hunger with hay.

Perfectly normal if you’re one of the 32 horses of the LAPD’s mounted unit, based in Atwater.

“Our bread and butter is crime suppression and crowd management,” said LAPD Lt. Earl Paysinger, the unit commander. “Generally, anywhere we go we have a tremendous effect on crime activity.”

Just last month, nearly 20 mounted officers showed up at Cal State Northridge to help control angry protesters following a controversial debate on affirmative action that featured former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

The officers on horses helped form a line between a rowdy crowd and the command post that the LAPD had set up on campus. They also acted as backup to the officers on foot.

But just like the officers who ride them, the horses can also face danger in the line of duty. So when they’re assigned to crowd control, the horses are fitted with special goggles to protect their eyes should they be required to charge into a crowd, and their saddles also offer a measure of protection.

Yet such special riot gear isn’t always enough. During the CSUN melee, for example, one of the protesters allegedly threw a brick that cut a horse on the head, resulting in the protester’s arrest on suspicion of injuring a police horse, Paysinger said. The horse is recovering, but the protester faces a possible penalty of up to a year in jail if convicted.

Such attacks are rare, however, which may be one reason why so many officers vie for the few and highly coveted spots on the mounted unit. The unit was first funded in 1988, thanks to a $1.5-million donation by the Ahmanson Foundation.

Besides Paysinger, the unit has three sergeants and 27 officers, many of whom had no previous riding experience.

To be selected for mounted duty, an officer must first belong to the department’s elite Metropolitan Division and undergo a training course that includes not only riding lessons but equine anatomy and psychology.

The horses are also specially trained. Unlike other horses whose instinct is to run from loud noises or hostile mobs, police horses have endured hundreds of hours of training to accustom them to gunfire, shouting and jostling.

Mounted patrols are dispatched daily around the city, often to work special drug enforcement details.

“The big plus is that we’re high enough to see what’s going on and to be seen as well,” which discourages drug dealers from making sales when his officers are around, Paysinger said. For the same reason, they frequently patrol shopping mall parking lots at Christmastime, to discourage car burglars out for a stash of holiday gifts.

At the same time, the mounted patrols are a public relations coup for the department given that residents who may be hesitant to approach officers in patrol cars seem to lose their inhibitions when they see a cop on a horse.

“It’s one of the most personal and intimate types of relationships that springs forth between an officer and a citizen,” Paysinger said. “They help introduce some people to the idea that the police are their friends.”