There Is Nothing Like A Large Animal To Break The Ice

The NYPD is using more horses:

Now, after decades of consignment to Central Park patrols, ceremonial trots down Fifth Avenue and the occasional cameo at a raucous demonstration, these horses — and 85 of their brethren — have begun patrolling high-crime neighborhoods, making late-night shows of force through Times Square and taking the lead during search-and-rescue missions along thicket-filled riverbanks and wooded urban parkland.

And there soon will be more of them: Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly is increasing the budget for the mounted troop, 75 horses and officers over the next three years, to eventually bring the total to 160, giving mounted patrols a larger role in battling crime.

“There’s a reason we call them the 10-foot cop,” Mr. Kelly said. “You can see them from blocks away, they’re great at crowd control and they’re probably the most photographed piece of equipment we have. I’m a huge fan.”

. . .

In New York, once paired, officers and their horses often spend the rest of their careers together. For example, Sgt. William McKay and Angus have been partners for nine years. Recently, they helped round up a group of men involved in a shooting. All it took was the approaching clippity-clop of Angus and few stern shouts from Sergeant McKay.

“When a cop on horseback issues a command, people tend to listen,” he said. “I mean, I’m sitting on a thousand pounds of animal. It’s also human nature to respect and fear a horse.”

Sergeant McKay’s Coney Island-based unit recently began patrolling some of the more troubled precincts of central Brooklyn, including East New York and Brownsville, where they often draw a crowd that is both appreciative and awed. In communities with a longstanding mistrust of the police, he said, there is nothing like a large animal to break the ice.

The horses go through rigorous training:

Prospects that make it to the training center in Pelham Bay Park are put through a nerve-racking gantlet of sensory challenges that include smoke bombs, clanging metal pots, hissing flares and the ultimate test, blanks fired a few paces from a horse’s head. After three to six months of training, graduates make a 12-mile victory march to Manhattan.

On a recent afternoon, about a dozen horses, some newly arrived, some tried-and-true veterans, were put through “nuisance training,” an ad-hoc obstacle course. Because they are highly socialized pack animals, the old-timers will often lend confidence to the rookies, which is particularly helpful when horses and their riders are forced to gallop across a blue plastic tarp, dash along an allée of burning hay, then made to march against a phalanx of hostile men waving trash bags and firing off air horns.

The idea, trainers explained, is to simulate the more harrowing aspects of city life: a gun battle, the possible mayhem of a United Nations protest or, say, the ugly aftermath of a Yankees-Red Sox game that spills out into the parking lot. (Attention would-be troublemakers: police horses cannot be thwarted by firecrackers, carrots or golf balls rolled beneath their feet.)