Mercury reader Rian writes in with a complaint about the Portland Police Bureau’s horses, pissing all over everything decent in our universe downtown:

While ordering food from the Fuego food cart that stands on the southeast corner
of the Pioneer Courthouse, I witnessed a horse relieve itself on the sidewalk in
full view. several pedestrians and customers at the food cart had to dance
around the puddle of piss, which flowed downhill from the horse to underneath
the cart, leaving the poor girl who was working at the cart to have to stand in
a puddle of horse piss for the rest of her shift. Not only will this drive away
customers, it’s a health violation. For at least half an hour after the incident
she was still standing in horse piss.

Prior to the horse pissing on the sidewalk the officer that was mounted on the
horse, as well as his partner, mounted on another horse, had cornered four
street kids between the horses and the fence that circles the courthouse,
intimidating and harassing them, which culminated in the pissing incident, after
which the cops simply left.

After watching this scene I have to ask: why do we need mounted police officers?
The police use them to routinely intimidate and harass bystanders, they let the
horses piss and shit all over the city sidewalks, leaving messes that others
have to deal with, and they don’t clean up after their horses. How is this okay?

Rian

You know where I stand on the issue. We recently scrambled to keep the horses.

10 replies on “On Police Horses and Golden Showers”

  1. Okay, now that I can imagine horses peeing all over the street kids, I am FIRMLY in support of the mounted patrol. Can we get some more? Can we get them some asparagus?

  2. a) I’ll bet a hundred dollars the worker did not stand in horse piss all day.
    b) Replace the word ‘horse’ with ‘street kid’

  4. D – if you replace the word ‘horse’ with the word ‘street kid’, the street kid would have been arrested for pissing in the street. Just saying.

    FWIW: I’m not against horses because they’re intimidating (scaring people out of committing crimes seems fair enough really), but because they’re an anachronistic waste of money, when there’s cheaper and more efficient ways of doing the job better (e.g. cops on bikes).

  5. I think it’s a pet program for the cops. Those who ride for recreation probably love that duty. Good for parades I guess.

  6. Has anyone been noticing an increase of these patrols all of a sudden? I had to deal with a couple of them in the fucking bike lane on my way up to work today. It’s like the funding they got recently boosted them to ridiculous levels in the downtown area.

    Hate ’em. Complete waste of time and money. The horse is never going to chase after some bad guy, and the cop riding it will just have to dismount and chase on foot anyways.

  7. “why do we need mounted police officers?”

    To corner street kids.

    “I had to deal with a couple of them in the fucking bike lane on my way up to work today.”

    I know! Isn’t it frustrating to have someone on a slow, anachronistic form of transportation riding in a lane meant for a faster form of transportation?

  9. Why did the cops not tackle the horse and break some of the horse’s ribs before tossing it in a trailer and driving it around until it died, isn’t that what they do when someone might have peed in downtown?

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