They did change the design of police car backseats to prevent injuries. Police do (sometimes) change their handling of prisoners to avoid accidents that have killed other prisoners.
People are debating this like it’s some kind of reasonable prisoner transfer that shouldn’t be complained too strenuously about, when it was a one-off unsafe mistake that the police themselves are disavowing.
It’s right to say it would be similar if he was force-walked outside a moving car. It’s not right to say that proximity to horses has no extra danger or risk. The main point is that officers put him at extra physical risk.
Once the police take away a person’s ability to keep themselves safe by physically restraining them, it’s their duty of care, and their responsibility. It doesn’t matter if it’s marching a prisoner down a flight of stairs, in the back of their vehicle, or tied to the side of a horse.
Not that there is even a question of whether the police could have walked that distance, since they plainly expected the person they arrested to walk it.
I’m not the greatest rider, but have professional teachers in my acquaintance, managed to stop the one horse which wanted to start a panicked flight by throwing me and am actually qualified to use a two horse carriage on public roads, as I took the necessary theoretical and practical courses and passed the exams.
I do admit that I only managed to hold on one round to the runaway pony when I was ten, with everyone looking the other way to the dressage show, only looking when the beast stopped on a dime and seeing me falling from a standing pony.
Absolutely. In about a dozen stupid ways. This is inexcusable.
My point is only that focusing on the training of the horses (with no understanding of equine service animal training) is ignoring a whole lot of potentially more significant sources of risk here, not to mention the whole matter of racism.
Neither did the other examples in that sentence. The police put that guy in avoidable danger. Talking about how highly trained the horses are is irrelevant to that.
Agreed. I said the same thing, too.
I feel like if the story was “Police tie black man to the hood of the car,” that there’d still be a dozen people making the argument that “Police have years of specialized driver education and they are taught to have total control of their cars at all times.”
My objections to this situation start the moment someone decided to clip a lead rope to handcuffs – right there you get unnecessary risk and dehumanization. Absolutely appalling.
All of the “I’ve ridden horses and sometimes they spook” comments are akin to saying “my dog chases cars in spite of having professional training, therefore guide dogs helping people cross the street must also be likely to chase cars”. Not particularly informative, and totally beside the point that these officers made poor decisions regarding risk and treating a human being with dignity.
Sure, but all the “these are super-trained horses, I’d feel super-safe walking beside them” sort of comments also ignore that this was a detainee with bound hands, and with a history of mental problems known to police, and who was also forced-walking with his vision obscured for most of the walk (he had an unsecured welder’s mask falling off his head before that picture was taken).
Context does matter. I’m sure you agree. Horses can’t be trained to always avoid circumstantially incapacitated humans who have tripped and fallen under their hooves.
Uh, nowhere did anyone say they’d be comfortable in that guy’s shoes. Quite the contrary, for reasons outlined in prior posts.
You’re making my point for me, though. The bad decisions here have everything to do with the details of this scenario – lead rope attached to handcuffs behind back, known history of mental problems, vision obscured, risks of leading a pedestrian from a different form of conveyance, dehumanizing a real, live person. And yes, the fact that horses are big and accidents can happen.
What matters is what is wrong with this scenario, not speculation about the reliability of service animal training, based on individual experiences with other animals and other forms of training.
At the end of the day, the horse didn’t spook. The officer didn’t harm the man through inappropriate force on that lead rope. Nobody tripped and fell. But a human being was treated like something less than a human being, and an image was projected to the community and the world that can be interpreted as a very alarming message about race and power.
Nobody here said horses are bad in all situations, or even that they’re bad in any situation other than this one example. Horses are great. Service horses can do amazing things.
In this one instance, the forced proximity to a horse was dangerous, in context.
And it’s not speculation to say that being forced to walk less than an arm’s length from a horse is added risk. Police horses spook, and police horse trip. They don’t do it as often as untrained horses, no one is denying that. But it was added hazard among the other added hazards, and it all speaks to the overall negligence of the officers involved.
Once again, you miss my point. I don’t care what anyone here thinks of horses, and I don’t think anyone has said that horses are bad.
The risks associated with the use of horses in policing, which you’ve helpfully provided links to, are accepted by the police departments that have mounted units. The risk management involved in that is complex, and whether the risks are ultimately acceptable is a somewhat subjective matter.
Fundamentally, the problem with this story, as it actually happened, was that police treated a human being as something less than human.
Nobody’s questioning the general concept of horses in policing. This example was non-standard and you’re talking about departments accepting general risk.
In this instance, the horses added clear avoidable risk to this human being that was restrained, health-compromised, and vision-obscured.
I’m glad you recognise the other factors, but that doesn’t mean the horses made the situation safer than if there were no horses involved.
Nobody said that horses made the situation safer. Only that backyard riders might not be in a position to assess the risks associated with service animal training.
Do you think that horse make the difference in police risk assessment and decision making? Look at Freddie Gray. Look at Tony Timpa.
The problem with this story is not horses or horse training. It’s dehumanizing human beings with lives and families and individual worth. It’s projecting public images that embolden racist sentiments. It’s systematic abuse of power by police. It’s racism.
Why do people feel the need to propose unlikely hypotheticals about how something worse could happen in response to already bad situations?
Yes, they could have lost control of the horses. That did not happen. There are also a thousand other accidents that could happen that also did not happen. What did happen was a cop lead someone with a leash down the road like they were a dog.
