When Police Horses Become Targets for Budget Cuts
Baltimore recently voted to disband its mounted police unit. As U.S. cities move to reduce law enforcement funding, cops on horseback could be the first to go.
Baltimore’s mounted police unit appears at a parade honoring healthcare workers in May.
Photograph courtesy the Baltimore Police Department
For 130 years, the streets of Baltimore have been patrolled by horses: The city boasts the oldest continuously running equine unit in the U.S., founded in 1888. Within the last 30 years, a veritable herd of 25 police horses clopped the city’s cobblestones; today there are just four steeds on the Baltimore Police Department force: Pax, Porter, Slurpee and Blair. They’re often spotted in the city’s downtown Inner Harbor area, where the animals’ great size helps give their human partners a higher vantage point to survey crowds of tourists.
But on June 15, the Baltimore City Council voted to eliminate the mounted unit as part of a 13-2 decision to reduce next year’s police spending by $22.3 million. The budget trim also includes cuts to the department’s marine unit and some patrol services. The vote came in response to recent demonstrations in Baltimore and across the U.S. over police brutality, though at less than 5% of the $550 million Baltimore annually spends on its law enforcement agency, the reduction falls far short of protesters’ demands to defund the police. Still, city council president and Democratic nominee for mayor Brandon Scott says it’s a signal of what’s to come, according to the Baltimore Sun.