Here and abroad, cops share horse sense

By JOHN BURGESON
Staff writer
ConnPost Article Launched: 10/31/2008 03:24:06 PM EDT

BRIDGEPORT -- They're separated by 3,200 miles of ocean, but they have nearly as much in common as a pair of socks.

Andrew Colley, a mounted officer with London's Royal Metropolitan Police, paid a visit this week to the city's mounted police division while on a visit to see his daughter, Julia, a freshman at the University of Bridgeport.

"I'm impressed, I'm very impressed," said Colley, a 25-year veteran of London's Mounted Branch. "The horses here have freedom of movement in their boxes, and you have paddocks out the back. In London, space is at a premium."

The Bridgeport Police Department's stables are at the western end of Seaside Park, a stone's throw from the UB campus. In size, Bridgeport's equestrian operation is a fraction of the London mounted force, with seven horses in one stable as opposed to 120 animals in eight stables.

Still, there are more similarities than differences. Both units are called out for crowd control, ceremonial functions and to act as friendly four-footed ambassadors to the public.

And just like Bridgeport, London's Mounted Branch is under scrutiny from the city's pencil-pushers.

"We'll get a chief constable come in, and shut down a mounted branch, like the Essex Mounted Police, and five or six years later, they'll decide that they need the mounted branch again because things are getting out of hand at football matches, open spaces, what have you," Colley said. "And then it winds up costing them hundreds of thousands of pounds to start it up again -- to lease a building and retrain horses and retrain people. It's happened so many times. Once you lose something like this, you want it back. And once you've got something set up like this, it costs very little to keep it running."

He said that even the London police herd has been thinned over the years.

"We used to have 200 horses," he said. "Now, with the number of operations going on in London -- demonstrations and things -- we're pretty hard-pressed to cover everything that's going on."

Elimination of Bridgeport's mounted police was being considered by recently departed Police Chief Bryan Norwood to save money, but no action has yet been taken on the idea, according to Michelle Lyons, who sits on the City Council's Public Safety Committee.

Colley said that mounted units are invaluable in presenting a friendly face of law enforcement. "No one's going to approach a patrolman in a police car," he said, "but the horses -- we get so many people come up to us."

As with the city's mounted division, London's officers on horseback ride English style, not western. This mean that both hands are usually kept on the reins.

"We do have to learn how to handle the horse with one hand, in case things get really nasty and have to use the baton or grab hold of someone," he said. "We've got our football hooligans -- you've got to stop them from fighting, and we have to make sure that the cues remain orderly."

Colley compared notes with several on the city's mounted patrol officers on a blustery day this week at the Seaside Park stables as waves in the distance battered the seawall. He even went out on a short patrol in the park with Bridgeport Officer Tom Choothesa, a 10-year veteran with the city's mounted unit.

"His visit was a blessing for a unit," said Choothesa, who was trained with the New York Police Department's mounted unit, as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "He gave us some tips on how to patrol and handle crowds. He knows a lot because his unit has been around for over 200 years."

"It's a busman's holiday," said Colley's wife, Paula, as her husband donned a helmet and climbed aboard Da Vinci, a doe-eyed, chestnut gelding.