At 135 years old, it’s the longest-running unit in the Toronto Police Service: a team based on a barn, not a station, and staffed with two and four legs alike.
And this year, the Toronto mounted unit and its 24 horses will cost taxpayers $ 5.9 million, if the latest police budget request is approved. Most of the money goes to the salaries of more than three dozen uniformed officers, with $ 120,000 set aside for animal supplies.
Amid budget shortfalls, changing demands for modern surveillance, and calls to defund the police, some North American police services have disbanded their mounted units in recent years or turned to private donors to cover the cost.
As the Toronto police board debates the force’s 2022 budget request this week, some wonder whether Toronto should consider grazing its mounted unit as well. Others defend it and say it is as critical as ever to public safety, especially in one of the largest cities in North America where protests and parades fill the streets.
But with a 2022 budget request totaling $ 1.1 billion, $ 25 million more than last year, critics say savings should be found where possible.
“Anything they can do to cut the budget is good, including the mounted unit,” said John Sewell, a member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition.
“It’s a waste of money,” said Sandy Hudson, co-founder of the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter.
Among the most common criticisms of mounted units: They are more nostalgia than necessity, brought up for community relations far more often than for crowd control. In a November column calling for the closure of that city’s mounted unit, Hamilton Spectator columnist Susan Clairmont called the city police horses “Little more than a highly instagrammable PR unit.”
In Toronto, another by-product of the assembled unit is also frequently photographed, for less than perfect reasons: horse poop Citizens say it is left too often on city streets and bike lanes.
“I’m not exactly sure what the rationale is for continuing to have mounted units in the 21st century,” said Kevin Walby, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg who researches surveillance and security, adding that horses respond ” to previous decades or centuries of surveillance ”.
Toronto police spokeswoman Connie Osborne said her mounted unit plays an “integral part in both proactive and reactive surveillance,” with officers and horses trained to respond to a variety of critical situations.
That includes crowd control at large sporting events and rallies, during searches for missing persons or wanted criminals, or to attack crime hotspots with visible patrols, he said. The unit also responds to “hundreds” of radio calls, proactively patrols and assists with planned operations, he said.
The tradition of mounted policemen dates back to 18th-century London and has since served a variety of functional and ceremonial purposes in the forces, said Mitchel Roth, a law enforcement historian at Sam Houston State University in Texas. But budget constraints and technological advances, including the police car, have “pushed them out of the main parts of the police,” he said.
American cities that have disbanded their mounted forces in the last decade include Boston and, more recently, Baltimore; In 2020, the Las Vegas police department allegedly blamed COVID-19-related budget deficits for the closure of its mounted unit. Closer to home, Kingston police also mentioned budgeting issues related to the pandemic, when eliminated his unit in favor of hiring new officers, prompting a community fundraiser to keep mounted police on the road.
In addition to cost, mounted units can be controversial, Roth said. In 2020 in Texas, a video of a mounted police officer leading a black man in handcuffs evoked damaging images of capturing slaves, prompting an apology from the police department and, as the Washington Post reported, a lawsuit.
But, says Roth, the RCMP still serves a vital role, including for visibility and crowd control. In certain situations, a mounted officer can be more effective than 10 regular police officers, Roth said.
“There is a certain intimidation factor. These horses, you know, weigh about 2,000 pounds. And then you put a great cop on top of that, ”he said.
In 2021, the unit was called in to more than 80 crowd control incidents to help reduce and control crowds, Osborne said. Last year, the unit helped in a dynamic situation in which a man who had been “attacking random people” tried to flee the police in a taxi. The mounted unit used horses to block the cabin and the man was successfully arrested, he said. They also helped track down and arrest someone wanted for attempted murder.
“They are worn every day and are crucial to ensuring officer safety and public safety,” Osborne said of the horses.
Among the reasons cited by Toronto Police Chief James Ramer for needing a $ 25 million budget increase was to staff the force’s “Vision Zero” team, a specialized unit dedicated to law enforcement. traffic to increase road safety. The team is currently 18 officers, less than half the number of uniformed officers dedicated to the mounted unit.
When asked how police determined the size of the mounted unit, Osborne said the numbers fluctuate and that the size takes into account shift patterns, vacations and illness to “provide an essential response and remain operationally viable.”
Christian Leuprecht, a professor of political science at Queen’s University and Royal Military College of Canada who studies police, said the right question may not be whether the mounted unit is necessary. What’s more important, he said, is whether the unit’s effectiveness is being measured and how it fits with the broader goals of the police service.
“In the grand scheme of things, it’s a relatively small amount of money and relatively few resources, especially for a service the size of Toronto,” Leuprecht said.
“But it is indicative of all the resources for the police: how many resources does the police really need to fulfill their mandate?”
The Toronto police board is scheduled to discuss the police force’s budget request on Tuesday.
Reference-www.thestar.com