Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words

SMPD Horse Patrol Conducts Equine Glam Photo Shoot in Front of Santa Monica City Hall

11 members of the Equine patrol and their riders participated in rare photo shoot across from City Hall Thursday

4.19.24 — Today, I was fortunate enough to run into 11 members of the Santa Monica Police Department equine patrol, participating in a first ever photo shoot involving officers and their horses.

Officer Del-Cornejo, who prefers to be called Dell, was astride a topically light colored horse. Dell told a photographer that he felt fortunate to be able to come to work and ride.

Officer Barajas rode a dark brown horse with a brown mane. She said that she has been with the department’s horse patrol for seven years. The purpose of the equine patrol is to reach places such as the beach and parks where it might be difficult for a conventional vehicle to achieve access. At any given time, Santa Monica has two officers on horseback conducting patrols somewhere in the eight square mile City.

Officer Barajas has been a member of the SMPD Equine Patrol for 7 years.

The Mounted Patrol or MPs, as they are called on the radio, I have a total of 11 officers, all of whom are pictured in the final photo. One horse was reluctant to stand still long enough to be photographed. “Ah that’s George. It figures,” joked the officers. The white horse with black spots really wanted to munch on the new grass in Tongva park, but reluctantly walked away to be photographed.

Do you know why Indo-European languages are the most wide-spread languages on Earth? Its because when the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans first domesticated the horse, around 10,000 years ago, they were the first humans to benefit from the new transportation. A man can walk perhaps 25 miles in a day. A horse carrying a warrior and much more gear can travel 100 miles in a day. Just a thought.

 
 

Reader Comments(2)

bobby writes:

In urban environments like LA and Santa Monica, horse mounted policemen also leave a trail of horse feces wherever they go. While collecting dog waste is required by dog owners (although few in la county actually do this because there are no consequences for anything and everyone is above the law), these city-paid officers track p00p wherever they walk without concern. Horse p00p smells and carries dangerous virus, bacteria, etc. Just like dog p00p. This is why we have toilets and sewers - so that we take the virus, bacteria, and other disease-causing products away from where people live. Schools are so bad that no one can comprehend this fact and so we have dogs p33ing and p00ping on every beach, every park, and smearing it on every sidewalk without regard to anyone else. Santa Monica police encourage this by leaving their horse p00p all over the City. It is absolutely disgusting. Basic civilized reasons exist for rules/regulation. Lack of enforcement breeds disease.

AndAnotherThing writes:

What a ridiculous and money-wasting idea. What area is there in Santa Monica that a police car cannot reach, even driving up on the lawn if necessary? I can see mounted police necessary in Malibu to search the canyons, but Santa Monica? It's a city and only eight square miles at that. Horses are so expensive to keep. This entire unit should be cut from the budget. Clearly, someone at city hall thought having mounted police in a metropolitan area would be a novel idea.