Broken Arrow Police Department To Establish Mounted Patrol Unit

The Broken Arrow City Council recently gave approval to the Broken Arrow Police Department to establish a mounted patrol unit at it most recent meeting. This means that Broken Arrow residents will see officers on duty on horseback from time to time.

Broken Arrow got inspiration from other cities and agencies with mounted patrols and decided that it was something that would help establish a better relationship with Broken Arrow citizens, while also helping the police department in a variety of areas, such as security for big events like festivals and fairs, while also assisting in search and rescue missions.

Officers on horseback have already helped the Broken Arrow Police Department with a recent Silver Alert that was issued.

"Not too long ago we had a Silver Alert come out in Broken Arrow near The Greens, the apartments up north. The vegetation was far too dense for people to go through on foot. It was far too dense for a UTV, utility vehicle. These provide us the ability to be up above that vegetation to look down and possibly find pathways that the gentleman had taken," Connor Poole, a Broken Arrow Police Department detective said.

While bringing in horses will help the police department, there is a lot of training that goes into making sure the horses are ready. Horses can get skittish, so a lot of the training revolves around stressing the horse by getting them used to the sights and sounds they would encounter while on the job.

Officers like Kaitlin Anderson said that they need to make sure that the horses feel comfortable in any environment and treat each day as a normal day. She also mentioned that officers need to create a bond with the horse they will be riding, in order to make the mounted patrol unit work.

"We always have a bond with our horses whether it’s ours or someone else’s that we're riding. At some point, you’ve got to create that bond and trust each other. That’s the only way you can get a 1,000-pound animal to do what we’re asking it to do," Anderson said.

The Broken Arrow Police Department said that it likely won't begin deploying the mounted unit at special events until after February, but officers say that anyone who sees them training is welcome to go up and meet them.