I'm Constable Peterson, I'm riding Police Horse King, and Constable Lav is riding Police
Horse Watson.
They're both six years old.
We're 100% responsible for their care, and that even includes their trimming of their
feet as well.
A normal day for us would be we'll go to the barn in the morning, catch the horses,
feed them, groom them up, tack them up, load them on a trailer, we bring them to Central
Division on Frederick Street and Kitchener.
From there we go out on patrol, downtown, Victoria Park, Iron Horse Trail, those types
of things.
Our role in policing is similar to an officer on foot or on a bike, we just are a little
bit more based on our presence, and the presence can be for positive contacts, or it can be
just for the fact that people like to see us and we're a sustained, slow-moving presence.
If we walk down King Street you can see us for several blocks for several minutes, whereas
a car or a bike might zip down and be here and gone.
We can make arrests from on top of the horse, especially when we're together.
In general, we don't get off the horse for safety reasons because it's easier for us
to stay in control on top of the horse than it is on the ground, and if the horse was
to go out of control, at least we're still with him if we're on the back.
Even if one of us had to get off the horse, we've done that before where I've got off
my horse and Becky held him from hers while I went into a store to assist a patrol officer
with an arrest.
My favorite part might be the fact that I get to do my job on a horse.
I like the riding part of it, I like horses, so that part really draws me in, but it's
all parts of policing are interesting and different, and this one is very, very different
from traditional roles.
There's definitely different advantages and disadvantages from this type of policing
versus regular patrol, because people actually will come up and start talking to us, and
it doesn't matter to me if they want to talk about my horse first and then it leads into
a conversation about a problem they're having with their neighbor or their loss, they don't
know where their directions are, or they just need general help or advice about something.
It's a different type of people that we can reach out to in this capacity, so people generally
are happy to see us, where in patrol we're always going to help people out when they're
in crisis.
They're not always happy to see us, but with the horses it's a different story, so it's
nice to have a positive influence as a police officer in the community.
Thank you.
