[Baltimore Citizen’s Academy] The Mounted Unit with Officer Slurpee
You may look at Baltimore’s mounted unit and see a tourist attraction, or a force that only gets ridden out for public events, but they are patrol units just like any other patrol unit.
Yes, the horses are actually used for normal patrols, because they allow an officer to see over fences or into sunroofs of cars. Yes, they could pull someone over in a car with a horse (although they didn’t have any stories, so I assume that is more theoretical).
The mounted unit for the BPD is a small unit of seven horses, six officers and one sergeant. It is the longest continuously operated mounted unit in the country, and has been operated since 1888. They keep the horses in an old Ford dealership under Orleans St and the JFX. They work 365 days per year, and are mainly for:
- traffic control and crime deterrent — they weren’t specific, but I believe this means situations where there are lots of cars moving slowly, and where a horse would get through traffic more easily than a car. This also includes getting drunk individuals off the street around 2am on the weekends.
- ambassador/show and tell — this is the example I was thinking where they go to large gatherings of people where crime could happen, but its much more likely that the horses will just get lots of attention
- crowd control — this is a very minor part of what they do, as they were basically talking about riot control where they have a police line, and can use the mounted officers to look over the police line to what is going on.
If you are ever in the city and see the horses, feel free to walk up to them to say hi (if they are not in the middle of something). The horses are friendly and love a nose rub.
