Thursday, 23 September 2010 22:46

Sure, it’s a shitty job (pun intended), but somebody has to do it.

Let’s not point fingers (Toronto Police - Mounted Unit) though and work through this as dutiful citizens.  A horse clops up onto the sidewalk of Atlantic Avenue in Liberty Village and promptly relieves itself, a load of manure falling to the middle of the walking path. As the two officers on horseback trot away, a middle-aged man strolling toward them expresses his disapproval with a raised voice and waves angrily at what the horse left in its wake.We often walk through the streets of Liberty Village dodging pungent piles of horse dung and playing peek-a-poo. Which begs the question-- aside from wild police-on-horse chases, are there any valid reasons for cops on horses?

"It really makes inroads into a community. People are a lot more apt to come up to an officer on a horse [as opposed to in a cruiser], to pat the horse, and chat with the officer," says Staff Inspector Bill Wardle.

And that might actually be true. These beautiful stallions can stop traffic-- literally. An intoxicated resident might assault a police officer on a bike or in a cruiser, but they're far less likely to do that with an officer on a horse.Still, it's the rear end that poses a problem.Your pup can poop out a pellet and you could get a ticket if you don’t scoop it because there is a bylaw addressing pet droppings. But an officer can be “horsing around” because no such law exists for horse dung. Poop 'n' scoop probably isn't a realistic option for officers in the middle of a patrol anyway.

Police department officials maintain that horse waste is not a public health concern; horse manure, a common fertilizer, tends to be quite dry and lacks the harmful bacteria present in excrement from carnivores."Horses are herbivores, so the manure does not contain bacteria, like the manure from carnivores; it is totally biodegradable," says Wardle. "It usually breaks down with the first rain or within forty-eight hours; that is, if the manure is not first taken by someone for their garden, or birds who use it in nests."  

Disease-free or not, it doesn't look — or smell pretty.  Ultimately, we don’t know what solutions the Mounted Unit might reach (if any at all).


Topics of discussion to resolve this public nuisance should include horse diapers, changing routes and maybe some sort of scooping arrangement.Then again, the whole notion of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a mounted unit stinks, too.

Laurice Gomes