- FILE PHOTO
- Tom Richards
Maybe someone can sell me on the reasoning for keeping the city’s mounted patrol, because I just don’t see it.
Mayor Tom Richards’ proposal to eliminate the patrol would’ve saved a little bit of money — a paltry sum, really, in the context of the multimillion-dollar budget gaps facing the city. But cost savings weren’t really the point.
Richards wanted to redirect the patrol’s seven officers to deal with rising gang-related violence in the city. As of last month, Rochester had experienced an 80 percent jump in shootings over the last year. Hiring an additional seven officers would’ve cost the city approximately $1 million, whereas eliminating the patrol and reassigning the officers would’ve saved the city about $100,000.
Richards’ plan seems perfectly logical and prudent to me. I’m sure the horses are a wonderful PR tool and come in handy for breaking up crowds, when necessary. But cutting the mounted patrol isn’t going to stop people from opening businesses in the city or keep suburbanites from coming here. Fear — rational or not — that they’re going to get shot strolling down Main Street, will and does.
I don’t doubt the City Council members who say they received calls and letters protesting the proposed cut. But when the city held a series of meetings to get the public’s input on the upcoming budget, the citizens there said they wanted to get rid of the patrol. In fact, it was the item they most wanted cut of all possible police services.
I suppose you can argue that the system worked exactly the way it’s supposed to. The mayor proposed something, City Council pushed back, and we got a compromise; the mounted patrol will be reduced to four officers.
And I know it’s an election year, and no one likes cuts. But honestly, if we can’t cut this, what can we cut?
This article appears in Jun 19-25, 2013.
I agree with your analysis on this Christine. Mounted patrol may have tactics for crowd control but these tactics are unlikely to be regularly employed. Meanwhile there are other (albeit less subtle) effective crowd policing tactics that could be deployed should the need actually arise. There are plenty of ongoing problem spots / issues in the city but downtown crowd control isn’t among them. Not to mention the city would likely save via early retirement if these horse cops were to actually be reassigned to the hood.
My thoughts on the mounted patrol were sealed in the winter. I lived on Harvard St, and one day there was a nice steaming pile of horsesh*t on our block, and I thought “That’s funny, why are they on Harvard St, there’s never any events or anything AND WHY THE F*CK CAN THEY JUST LEAVE THEIR SH*T IN THE STREET?!”. Then, that week on the news I saw a video of the St. Paul Quarter after bar time and it looked like an English soccer riot. In England, they use horses at riots, but in the St. Paul Quarter they were nowhere to be found.
Apparently, the police haven’t figured out how to use them, so why are we paying for them? Also, last night at Party in the Park, a crowd control scenario, they were nowhere in sight.