Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993 TAG: 9303140087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HORSE CORPS CAMPAIGN MOUNTING
A cop in a Chevrolet is a cop - a potential Dirty Harry behind the wheel of a four-wheel tool of speed and destruction.A cop on foot is good community relations - Officer O'Malley swinging his baton, buying ice cream cones for lost kids and munching apples from the mustachioed grocer's bin.
But which stereotype do we apply to a cop on horseback?
Roanokers don't know because it's been decades since we've had mounted police - if ever.
But Downtown Roanoke Inc., a merchant's group, thinks Big Lick would benefit from a flatfoot on hooves - or two - and is asking the city to consider saddling up a couple of mounties.
It is purely coincidence that we bring this up in the same week that the city introduces a dumb-idea, stupid-government-spending hotline. Of course, that this is a coincidence is not to say that someday the hotline won't be jammed with calls about the Roanoke P.D. horsie corps.
Downtown Roanoke Inc. has undertaken noble causes before. Notable and recent was its members' partial underwriting of the peregrine falcon release from a downtown rooftop.
Are police horses noble? They're pretty to look at. Citizens love to pet them, and the clip-clop of their shod hooves on city streets are soothing sounds that throw us back to another era.
They can also throw us back to the financial abyss.
Horses need stables. Hay. Grain. Grooms. Shoes. Veterinarians. Someone to muck stalls. Saddles. Bridles. All that stuff that Elizabeth Taylor never worried about in "National Velvet."
Downtown Roanoke Inc. says it can get a lot of that donated and would create a non-profit organization to continually raise funds; the city would just have to provide salaries and benefits, police equipment and training.
In exchange, mounted police patrols could help control panhandling and vagrancy and work public-relations wonders.
By eating or stomping vagrants and by clip-clopping down Market Street, will horses be worth their weight in fertilizer?
Or are they a boondoggle waiting to happen?
Roanoke's shtick is getting to be its past - a frighteningly uninventive strategy. We're bringing back a hotel; we've restored an old neon sign; we've refurbished the old market; we've got old streetlights and old trains; we want new old trolleys; now comes Willie Shoemaker with a riding crop in one hand, a riot baton in the other.
Meanwhile, other cities have long eyed mounted police as a nice luxury that's easy to cut when the budget gets lean.
In 1976, New York City's mounted police were rescued from extinction by the generous intervention of a wealthy Texan: Ross Perot.
In 1988, San Francisco's mayor tried to eliminate his city's 24-horse patrol and its $1.5 million budget. Emotion beat back practicality and the horses were spared the glue factory.
There is no empirical measure of the value of a cop on horseback, just as there's no yardstick for cops in Chevrolets or on foot. Police presence of any sort seems a good idea. But where taxpayer money is involved, cost and presumed benefit are thrown in equal measure into the mixer.
Do we really want Mr. Ed and Man o' War cantering downtown? Sure!
Do we need them? Hmmmm. And do we want to invest a police penny for shtick and gimmickry when our cops are outgunned, undermanned and modestly paid? (Forgive me this transparent attempt to curry favor with rank-and-file police officers.)
Horses would be a neat, touristy touch.
But before we shovel our tax dollars - hi yo Silver, away! - to Secretariat and Black Beauty, let's try ponies.