A story in the Star Tribune showed that the Minneapolis City Council has followed through on it’s commitment to defund the Minneapolis Mounted Patrol. Usually, the police chief would be given latitude to find places to reduce the budget rather than the Council dictating to the chief, just a matter of respect and professional courtesy.
Why did the council decide on behalf of the department where to make cuts? It is not really evident, but Council President Payne offers an explanation. He tells us the mounted patrol is reminiscent of overseers on plantations during times of enslavement. For me, that explanation is an epic stretch of credulity. I suspect if you asked 100 random people on Hennepin Avenue how they viewed the mounted patrol, none would reference an image of plantation overseers.
Rather, I believe it is yet another example of the fellow travelers on the council looking for ways to create and maintain an estrangement between the officers and the community. The mounted patrol is an excellent bridge builder and encourages friendly dialogue.
Other examples of keeping officers at arm’s length from the community include moving Community Crime Prevention SAFE out of the police department, the loss of permanent beat officers, school resource officers, and a gross reduction in the Police Activities League.
This is by no means the first time a city council has proposed eliminating funding for the mounted patrol. As the Deputy Chief of Services between 1996 and 2000, I was the primary liaison between MPD and the city council. I was called upon repeatedly to explain to council how the mounted patrol not only engaged the community but also had genuine operational benefits. The business community got behind the mounted and created the Friends of the Minneapolis Mounted, a non-profit helping with the cost of the unit.
To illustrate the operational benefit, I completed my 28 years with MPD in August of 2003. My last Saturday with the city I chose to wear my uniform and walk the beat downtown, Hennepin and First Avenue, on the night shift, one more time. A couple of hours after bar closing several hundred people were in line to get into Pizza Luce on North 4th Street. In the middle of the line, a fight broke out amongst 30 intoxicated people. Absent the mounted, you would have sent in a dozen officers who would have become physically engaged. Three officers on horseback walked into the midst of the fight, did 360 turns with their large horse backsides, and dispersed the fighters. Because of the mounted, no one went to jail, no one went to the hospital, and there were no ensuing years of lawsuits.
The Star Tribune story also mentioned that all other Minnesota mounted units had disbanded, due to cost. Not in all cases. I was the Police Chief at the University of Minnesota when we established and disbanded our mounted unit. It was not disbanded due to cost, it was a great ice breaker with students who generally loved the horses, the horses were very useful in many major campus events like athletics or National Night Out. Through mutual aid, mounted units assisted one another. UMPD assisted St. Paul for the RNC and Minneapolis for the Aquatennial and Juneteenth. They reciprocated for campus events. UMPD horses were stabled at the University of Minnesota Equine Center on the St. Paul Campus, getting first class veterinary care, and teaching veterinary students.
UMPD was a relatively small department of 51 officers. We had two full time riders and several part time riders, trained by the Minneapolis and St. Paul mounted units. After several years the mounted officers, relatively early in their careers, were ready to move on to new duties to round out their experiences for advancement. Were we a larger department, with more options for career development, we would have no doubt maintained our mounted patrol.
I have spoken with Chief Ohotto of the Minneapolis Park Police. The reason for disbanding their mounted was also due to staffing. They could not operate a mounted unit and meet all their other responsibilities to Minneapolis Parks and Recreation.
The Minneapolis Mounted Unit has proven over and over, it’s operational worth and it’s value as ambassadors of the City.
The hypocrisy of the city council majority is stunning. They claim to seek great improvement in the relationships between MPD and the community – a goal one can hardly oppose. But then they do everything they can to minimize interactions other than confrontations.
Chief Hestness’ article is a prime example. If you can’t defund the police, then defund the horses! Result is a lost means of positive community interaction.
Another: Last I checked the design for the combination Third Precinct/Community Center completely separated the two functions, so it would never happen, spontaneously, that an ordinary cop and an ordinary citizen might actually meet in the building and discover each other’s humanity.
Another: The more cops are relegated to responding to 911 calls only, the less they and people in neighborhoods can meet in low-stress circumstances.
If I were a cynic, I might suppose the council is actually trying to engineer bad relations between cops and community.