- Denis C Theriault
Not long ago, representatives from the International Association of Athletics Federations visited Commissioner Steve Novick. The organization is planning to hold its 2016 World Indoor Championships in Portland next year, and plans to ask the city for a lot of cash to make that happen.
Novick says he told his visitors what he tells anybody who comes around asking for money: “Whatever the odds might be that I’ll support your request, they’ll go up if you’ll say in public: ‘This is more important than the mounted patrol.'”
Even in plush budget times (the city’s got an estimated $31 million more to play with this year than last), and with Portland City Council slated to hear of a new study recommending more cops this afternoon, Novick this budget season is continuing a refrain he’s taken up since his early days in office: The city should ditch its five-officer horse cop unit.
As we explore in this week’s Hall Monitor column, he’s probably not alone. At a March 26 work session focusing on the police budget, Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman—the only elected officials present, beyond Novick—said the unit’s future is an open question.
“It’s time to talk about the mounted patrol again,” Fritz said at the hearing.
That’s never been a sanguine discussion. In past years—when the Portland Police Bureau offered up cutting the mounted patrol as a sort of dare to city council—there’s been overwhelming pushback by some facets of the community. The monied folks at the group Friends of the Mounted Patrol, which has long helped subsidize the horse unit, ramped up its support in 2013. Over the last two years, Friends has kicked in $400,000 to help the city cover costs of nearly $2 million for the horse unit.
This year, new Police Chief Larry O’Dea didn’t even suggest horse cops might be cut in his proposed budget. That’s because, he told city commissioners, it’s simply not realistic. Instead, O’Dea suggested trimming gang, traffic, and patrol cops in order to offset new positions to help implement the police bureau’s settlement with the US Department of Justice.
“That comes up every time,” O’Dea said when Novick asked why the mounted patrol wasn’t on the chopping block. “It’s one of those things that seems to have become a sacred cow, rather than realistically what makes the most sense to the police bureau.”
Novick wasn’t convinced.
“I think the community support is strong and not wide,” he said. “If it were totally up to you, if you had a choice between cutting mounted patrol and precinct officers, gang officers, which would you pick?”
O’Dea pretty much dodged, saying: “For me it comes down to what the community wants.”
We’ve seen this all before. Last year, Novick forced a serious discussion about axing the mounted patrol, but the unit survived.
This year, though, the city’s trying to find a new place to house city police horses. And it’s unclear if there are hundreds of thousands of dollars from the community to prop them up. Bob Ball, who helps head up the Friends of the Mounted Patrol effort, says the group hasn’t yet talked about raising money for a third year of substantial support.
“If we were asked that’s something we’d consider,” Ball says.
But he doesn’t think the mounted patrol should be on the table at all.
“After all the effort we went through the past couple years, I think it would be really unwise for us now that the budget’s better,” Ball says.
Ball makes a familiar argument—that the unit earns cops goodwill itself at a time of police distrust.
“There’s no program I’ve ever seen that puts a better face on the Portland Police Bureau,” he says. “I believe it would be an unwise to even think about (cutting it).” He forwarded the Mercury a recent study out of the UK that suggests mounted units “are associated with higher levels of visibility, trust and confidence in police.”
The budget process is still in the early stages. And with the police bureau touting consultants’ findings that it needs 27.5 new positions, there’s a good chance it will regain some employees it shed in the heavy cuts of 2013.
Novick, though, notes that those recommendations are only a small fraction of a police bureau that employs more than 1,000 people.
“That means the police bureau has 97 to 98 percent of the staff they should have,” he says. “I expect most bureaus would kill for that.”
I wonder if Uber could use some well trained horses as an alternative to cars?