Are Police Horses a Dying Breed?

Modern police departments offer their officers a wide array of ways to cruise around town. There are cops riding in standard squad cars of course, but also ones on motorcycles, electric scooters, bicycles, even dorky Segways. But nearly a century after motorized transport became standard for departments, across the country and around the world there are still police who get around in that most old-fashioned way: astride living-and-breathing horses.

In an era of increasing oversight and decreasing budgets, old-school mounted police programs face an uncertain future. When you factor in all the expenses for training, feeding, stabling, and outfitting, funding a single police horse is decidedly expensive. And horse units, usually deployed at large public events, perform poorly on typical accountability metrics like arrest rates. With so many more cost effective alternatives, mounted police have been forced to make the case that their units still belong.