The City Council defunded the Minneapolis Mounted Patrol. Will cops on horseback be put to pasture?

For 30 years, visitors seeking entertainment after dark in downtown Minneapolis were likely to see a towering Percheron or Clydesdale trotting down city streets.

The equine arm of the police force delighted children, dispersed unruly patrons at bar close and safeguarded major sporting events like the Super Bowl and Final Four. They patrolled outside Taylor Swift concerts, at the annual Aquatennial parades and became a fixture on Nicollet Mall.

Department leaders laud their police horses and trained riders as a highly visible, effective crime-fighting force especially adept at managing large crowds. Critics often cast them as a costly, outdated version of policing that should be relegated to history books.

Last month, the City Council targeted Minneapolis’ mounted patrol in a flurry of budget amendments, intending to finally dismantle it. The effort marked at least the third time since 2009 that elected officials have sought to divert money from the unit to other public safety measures.

Three separate council actions reallocated $150,000 — more than one-quarter of this year’s $521,000 mounted patrol budget — to fund a civilian crime prevention specialist position in the Fifth Precinct, pay for additional needle pickup in the Hiawatha neighborhood and bolster transportation for seniors.

In an interview, Chief Brian O’Hara said he was unclear why council members singled out the mounted unit through a line-item budget cut, rather than ask him where dollars could be shifted. He characterized the decision as political, “not based on facts,” but ideology.

Council President Elliott Payne told the Minnesota Star Tribune those actions were primarily rooted in a desire to rein in spending and make hard choices about which investments provide the highest level of safety. Given limited police resources, progressives weren’t sure it made sense to maintain the last horse patrol in the state.

“As we try to balance the priorities of the community with the raw fiscal constraints of local government, this just didn’t look like a really wise use of money from our perspective,” Payne said.

An estimated 150 mounted units remain in the United States, down from more than 500 in the mid-1990s. Departments from Seattle to Kansas City shuttered or scaled back such specialized details amid budget cuts and staffing shortages in recent years. Many of the nation’s oldest horseback patrols, including Boston’s, fell victim to the 2008 recession and were forced to close their stables.

Similar programs were disbanded in St. Paul in 2019 and Duluth in 2017 in an effort to redirect crucial public safety dollars to more overt investigative purposes. The University of Minnesota also eliminated its program in 2012, finding new homes for its three horses.

But O’Hara is determined to keep his cops in the saddle.

Command staff are now exploring philanthropic opportunities to help subsidize the unit so the department won’t lose what’s widely considered its best public relations tool.

Minneapolis formed its mounted patrol unit in 1994, following a push by veteran street cops and buy-in from business leaders.

The Downtown Council, always searching for ways to improve the city’s image, offered to pay all expenses except for police salaries during the first 18 months of a pilot program.

Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton praised the fledgling division, then made up of just two officers and three horses, for increasing the perception of safety downtown.

“I see it as a practical and useful tool to augment security in the community,” Sayles Belton said at the time. “It’s not sugar coating. It’s serious police work.”

Standing several feet tall and weighing about 1,400 pounds, the officer-and-horse teams were thought to provide a natural deterrent to crime. A mounted officer can see up to three blocks away, spot troublemakers in massive crowds and intervene before violence occurs — making one mounted officer as effective as nearly 10 cops on foot, proponents argue.

The animals also could break down barriers between police and residents historically distrustful of law enforcement. Their presence can foster meaningful encounters not centered around a crime.

“Horses are able to move people without hurting them,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, D.C. “This is a positive image.”

Faced with a $3 million deficit and few good options, former Minneapolis Chief Tim Dolan recommended dissolving the popular horseback unit in 2009 and reassigning all 12 officers to other roles in lieu of layoffs. But Council Member Lisa Goodman lodged a rousing defense of the mounted patrol, persuading the budget committee to spare it in a 4-2 vote.

The prospect of eliminating the unit did not resurface until late 2020 when, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, elected officials sought to assert greater influence over the embattled Police Department by shifting millions into alternative programs.

The City Council cut $230,000 from the mounted patrol that year, wiping out funding associated with feeding and boarding MPD’s dozen horses.

But the department bucked the council’s wishes and kept them anyway. Mayor Jacob Frey and then-Chief Medaria Arradondo viewed the specialized unit as a “staffing multiplier” at a time of rapid attrition, so they asserted their executive authority to transfer the necessary money within the MPD.

The debate re-emerged again last month during a marathon round of budget talks in which the council ultimately diverted $1.8 million from Frey’s proposed police budget, which is still $12 million higher than last year.

Members of the council’s progressive majority expressed a desire to cut more than $115,000 from the mounted division in favor of adding a second crime prevention specialist to southwest Minneapolis’ Fifth Precinct, the only station house with just one dedicated civilian police liaison.

Combined with two unrelated amendments, the move essentially zeroed out funding for MPD’s stable lease in Maple Plain, which runs through the end of 2025.

“I think that a crime prevention specialist is much more important, much more impactful for the safety of our residents than the mounted patrol,” said Council Member Katie Cashman, whose 7th Ward constituents would directly benefit from the position.

Council member LaTrisha Vetaw balked at funding that new role at the mounted unit’s expense.

“I can’t vote against Haven, Maximillian, Buster, Blue, Trooper, Teak, Goliath, Rooster and Cabo. Those are the horses,” she said. “I’ve met a lot of them personally. ... They are living animals that people love and care for ... so I just wanted to say their names.”

The comment spurred criticism from family members of those killed by law enforcement, who have adopted the phrase “say their names” as a rallying cry to call attention to systemic racism and police brutality.

None of her peers articulated a specific reason for wanting to end the program this year. But several wondered aloud in the past whether maintaining a horseback unit — especially the sole one in Minnesota — was misguided.

“It’s antiquated to me,” Payne said in an interview, noting that the horses and their elevated riders hark back to an earlier era of plantation overseers and, for some, evoke visceral images of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents driving back migrants on the southern border.

Nationally, some mounted units have been accused of aggressive crowd control tactics when deployed during large protests, or become liabilities for injuring civilians. Police in Galveston, Texas, sparked outrage in 2019 after images surfaced of two white mounted officers leading a handcuffed Black man behind them by a rope. His suspected crime was trespassing.

Payne is unaware, however, of any complaints or allegations of brutality on the part of Minneapolis’ equine patrols.

Chief O’Hara and his staff said they never hear such concerns from residents, who flock to the horses as they clip-clop along Hennepin Avenue or through neighborhoods on patrol. In recent years, grievances have been limited to horse droppings on the Midtown Greenway.

“Every single person that approaches us has a truly genuine joy and enthusiasm to see us,” said Sgt. Adrian Infante, one of two current full-time members of the horseback unit, tasked with training and deploying 21 part-time riders across the city. “There’s zero negativity, zero animosity against us.”

During an average season, spanning April through December, their team conducts more than 100 rides and attends dozens of community events, including the Minnesota State Fair. Their heightened visibility makes them an easy contact point for anyone seeking assistance, like frantic parents trying to track down missing kids, or to report a crime.

“They bring a softness to the environment nowadays,” Infante added. “We are way more approachable on horseback than any officer can be in a squad car.”

Since 2021, the police budget has continued to steadily climb even as the department atrophied. MPD’s approved 2025 budget is roughly $229 million, a record-setting sum meant to fund historic pay raises and dozens of new positions tasked with carrying out court-mandated police reforms.

City department heads are given wide discretion on how to spend those dollars, meaning they can — and have — undermined the council’s power of the purse by simply moving money around.

For now, the steeds remain. If they’re forced to gallop away, there’s little chance of bringing them back. Police officials say that would be too cost prohibitive.

Deena Winter of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.