Susan Clairmont: Disband Hamilton police’s mounted unit. At $819,995 last year, it’s a colossal waste of taxpayer money

I love horses.

Really, I do.

I enjoy seeing the magnificent Hamilton police horses walk up to a Tim Hortons drive-thru window, nuzzle a child at a festival, visit with folks having a beer on a patio or stroll majestically through our downtown core.

I am not anti-horse.

I just want more bang for my buck.

Eleven years after the mounted police unit was established, I still think it is a colossal waste of money.

Last year, the six-horse, five-officer unit cost us $819,995 - $119,000 of that was for the horses, the rest for the officers.

Combined, they made just three arrests and issued only 23 provincial offence notices.

As two-legged officers struggled to cover shifts, adapt to a pandemic, investigate the highest number of homicides (17) the city has seen in 30 years, answer a record number of opioid overdose calls, deal with unprecedented gun violence and confront such controversial and complicated issues as encampments and protests, those horses are little more than a highly Instagrammable public relations unit making hay out of goodwill tours and ceremonial appearances.

The unit, which deploys for eight shifts each week, is now down to five horses with the recent retirement of Barron. The other horses are Lincoln, Griffin, RHLI, MacNab and Argyll.

In 2020, the unit went to 11 demonstrations and conducted six searches. They attended 20 special traffic details and 404 high visibility and reassurance patrols" in order to provide a visible police presence. There were 326 strolls through business areas.

They also paid 25 visits to homeless encampments. That one is a head-scratcher. If police want to have meaningful interaction with those who are unhoused, it seems doing it eye-to-eye might be more productive.

The horses have historically attended lots of parades, festivals and schools to build a good rapport with the community. Of course, in 2020, there were no parades, festivals or school activities due to COVID-19.

Most of the unit's time - 63 per cent - was spent in Division 1 in the lower city.

If taxpayer dollars were not an issue, I'd be happy to have lovely police horses everywhere. (And more dogs too, please!)

But our policing budget isn't an infinite feed bag.

While the main purpose of the mounted unit is arguably to create better relations with the public, we now live in a world where the public wants something more substantial than that. Offering horses as a gesture of goodwill these days might just backfire.

Defund police supporters want a smaller police budget and fewer front-line officers. Black Lives Matter supporters want more transparency and accountability from their police.

These problems are too big for even the most noble police horse to fix.

Elsewhere, major police services have disbanded their mounted units. Some because they understand that sentiments are changing. Some because they have determined they weren't worth the money.

Concerns have also been raised over the welfare of the horses as well as the safety of crowds around them.

In the U.S., equine police units - some more than 100 years old - have been shut down in the last decade or so in Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, Las Vegas, San Diego and Kansas City.

I know the Hamilton police horses are beloved. I get it.

But that shouldn't be the benchmark.

Susan Clairmont is a Hamilton-based crime, court and social justice columnist at The Spectator. Reach her via email: sclairmont@thespec.com