1/15/2024 0 Comments Horae statue at walmart![]() ![]() “Are they stopping real crime?” Gude figured. Gude said when he sees the officers and their horses out in Hollywood, which is most weekends, they don’t tackle much hard crime. ![]() “The main focus is high-visibility, but for us if there’s somebody on the street drinking a beer, that’s not something to focus on so much now.” “Traditionally, we’ve had high visibility just because of the horses alone,” Figueroa said. He said that the visibility and mere presence of the officers and their horses in areas that experience higher rates of crime is often good enough. Figueroa countered that the vast majority of the time the unit’s focus is not to make arrest for small-time crimes such as drinking in public or to clear encampments. … I feel like they target quality-of-life incidents.” “One time I saw them give a guy a ticket for throwing a cigarette on the street. “They target homeless people non-stop,” Gude said. ![]() “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them get that aggressive,” William Gude, a police-watchdog activist who was out there then and has often seen the unit in Hollywood, said about the mounted officers. For those assignments, even the horses wore clear face shields and marched in a straight line toward unruly crowds of revelers that refused to leave the area after officers declared unlawful assemblies. That overall figure fell to 81 in 2022 in large part, Figueroa said, because the unit’s number of officers was cut in about half from 30 or so because of budget cuts and to put the officers on traditional patrols.Ī key job of the unit is high-visibility crowd control, which came into play in 2020, when the Lakers and the Dodgers won championships, unleashing chaos in downtown L.A. Of those, 63 were for drinking alcohol in public, roughly two dozen for possession of a controlled substance and about 10 for a robbery or a burglary. In 2021, the department arrested 269 people, including making 34 felony arrests and 107 misdemeanors. What the unit costs in total is not laid out in LAPD’s budget for example, the officers’ salaries are in the general budget. Those funds covered such expenditures as for food, shavings for the stall floors, salt blocks, fly spray and veterinary care. Last fiscal year, the budget for taking care of the horses and the barn was $138,000, according to information provided under a California Public Records Act request. ![]() We know how it’ll react, because we ride them every day and train with them, but they don’t.” “People are more comfortable being face-to-face with a human than a 1,500-pound horse,” Lt. and Hollywood, where the horses act partly as a vehicle for officers to do regular police work and partly as a deterrent. They are often dispatched to what the department identifies as high-crime areas, including pockets of South L.A. Name tags for each horse rest on stall doors: Stanley, Whitewater, Joey, Boston.ĭay-to-day, the unit operates somewhat like the others within the LAPD: Officers get assignments, prepare their gear and go into the field. There are 40 stalls, washing spaces and offices - with photos, ribbons and news clippings lining the walls. Rogers was standing next to the arena at LAPD’s spread in the Glendale foothills that includes that barn, well kept by the cops and two civilian caretakers. You get to interact with all different parts of the community.” “Being out on the horse is nice because we go to every part of the city, from San Pedro to Tujunga to Venice Beach. “It’s a different challenge, a different way of doing police work,” Rogers said. Eric Rogers, a 30-year LAPD veteran who has been with the horses for four years. “We use the horse for a different mode of transportation,” said Sgt. ![]()
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