The Mounted Spectator/Riding High
Conlon, Edward
Riding High by Edward Conlon T 6 6 he other day Billy Byrnes whipped around and bit me in the ass," Chris White announces. "Drew blood and everything." Byrnes and White are colleagues at the New...
...The "ten-foot officers," as they are affectionately known, are thought to have many times the deterrent effect on criminals of their pedestrian colleagues...
...If they were that intelligent, they wouldn't let you on their backs and tell them what to do...
...On a recent visit to the stables, McQuade expressed mild concern that one horse was "a little herdbound"—better for demonstrations, that is, than street patrol...
...He's a more intelligent horse, I think...
...You don't want a plug that mopes through a crowd if you need to cut through for a rescue...
...The thoroughbred was a bit flighty, but until they've gone through the ninety days of trials, Flynn says, there's no way of knowing which steeds have got the right stuff to be in uniform...
...And like some people can't take the city, some horses can't either...
...The selection process for the Mounted Unit is more rigorous: Only one horse in three satisfactorily completes the three-month training program...
...A big horse might not have anyguts, but a little scrawny thing might be all heart...
...T he affection between beast and burden may not reach the degree it does in the K-9 unit, in which the dog goes home each day with its handler, but since the horses generally serve ten to fifteen years with the force—until their twenties, when they are retired to a farm in Ofisville, New York—it is palpable enough that Sgt...
...He likes the streets, likes kids...
...Byrnes and White are colleagues at the New York Police Department, but White is surprisingly unruffled by the attack—Billy Byrnes is a horse, after all, and the episode is just another routine marital squabble at the NYPD's Mounted Unit Division...
...The process," says Flynn, "tends to involve hours of boredom and moments of panic...
...Even the most promising candidates can sometimes suddenly manifest strange and unyielding fears late in the training program—of puddles, or steam rising from sewers, or fluttering flags...
...Until they are accepted into the unit, the horses are known only by number...
...Says Muglia: "We don't want their minds wandering...
...Flynn thought it necessary to caution me against "anthropomorphism...
...Yet they also enjoy wonderful popularity with the public...
...Flynn examined two horses that had just arrived the day before, a bay thoroughbred racer and a darker bay quarter horse...
...If you were struck by the uncanny resemblance between the nag that bankrupted you at Aqueduct and the mount bearing a patrolman in Times Square, for once the odds might favor you...
...For a moment, I wondered whether the city truly had broken out into brave new worlds of regulation—"No human characteristics shall be projected on an animal species without express permission of the Department of Agriculture...
...He has bit me a few times...
...Nobody," says Detective Muglia, "pets a radio car...
...But he had to be pleased with the horse's name: McQuade II...
...Some are given conventional horsey names like "Saber," while others honor dead or retired police officers, or even corporate or individual donors like McQuade...
...N ew York's Mounted Unit unit was formed just after the Civil War, when its primary duty was to apprehend reckless cabs and runaway horses...
...They must be sound of wind and limb, 15.2 hands high, and are generally thoroughbred, standardbred, Morgan or quarter horses between three and nine years old...
...D'Eugenio rides Doc Emil, named after a Bronx Zoo vet, but the horse is known as Francis, the television mule...
...He had already put them through their paces on the dirt ring, the park, and, briefly, onto the Bronx streets...
...D espite its popularity and effi- ciency, the Mounted Unit was almost dissolved during New York's crippling fiscal crisis in the 1970s...
...But the point was well illustrated by Lieut...
...It has to be a marriage between horse and rider," says Detective Nick Muglia, a twenty-five year 'veteran with the Mounted Unit...
...GI The American Spectator October 1995 67...
...Claus, and they always bring a special gift for the ten-foot officers: a great big bag of Christmas carrots...
...You could sleep with him, lie down with him...
...Heart's what we need...
...Today, the division's focus is on street patrol and crowd control...
...Those that make the final cut are named in a special ceremony...
...Even so, the appellation is not strict, in part because the horse doesn't know his name, but also because there's a certain lack of panache in halting a Times Square gallop with the command, "Ho, there, easy there, Motorola IV...
...Because if there's a divorce, the cop is on his back on the street...
...While most Derby winners don't wind up in uniform, the horses that go on to a second career in law enforcement with the NYPD are no slouches...
...He kind of picked up the name when this Chinese tourist insisted he was a mule...
...The division also receives sup66 The American Spectator October 1995 port from people like Jim McQuade, a Bronx funeral director who has donated seven horses to the Mounted Unit...
...Daniel D'Eugenio, who heads the Mounted Unit...
...When asked why, D'Eugenio is blunt: "Because he's a horse, that's why...
...The Police Foundation stepped in, however, taking charge of the purchase of the animals and much of the cost of their maintenance...
...Remount is an old cavalry term for the replacement you got when your first steed fell to the Apaches or Cossacks, but in those circumstances, you'd take just about any horse that came along...
...His ears are a little big," concedes D'Eugenio...
...The foundation attracts a wide variety of high-profile benefactors—Broadway is represented by Harold Prince and Bernadette Peters, Sardi's and the Schuberts—but the Mounted Unit gets some grass-roots support, too...
...Sometimes we don't know much about a horse before we get them," says Sergeant Brian Flynn, who runs the Remount facility...
...But Francis is an excellent horse, like a pet...
...the unit also patrols Brownsville in Brooklyn and Tremont Avenue in the Bronx...
...The mounted steeds are a familiar sight in Manhattan's Theater District, and Edward Conlon is a writer living in the Bronx...
...And they are also geldings, exclusively...
...Each Christmas a couple visits the stables dressed as Santa and Mrs...
...The horses train for the force in and around Remount, an elderly, ivy-draped brick building in the Bronx's Pelham Park...
Vol. 28 • October 1995 • No. 10
