Making and Breaking Barriers: Assessing the value of mounted police units in the UK

This report outlines findings from an 18-month project examining the value of mounted police in the UK. The research approach took a broad view of the concept of value in police work, including responding to and preventing crime and disorder as well as building public trust and confidence in the police, providing reassurance and visibility. The project also examines the costs associated with mounted policing, and includes an international questionnaire exercise involving senior mounted officers in other countries to place the project findings in a more global context. Chapter 2 provides an overview of mounted police work using available UK police deployment data, prior literature on mounted police and relevant theoretical literature from policing studies. Following this, Chapter 3 examines research findings from mounted police in neighbourhood patrol settings, alongside comparative data for non-mounted police in similar roles, particularly foot patrol officers. The following two chapters examine data gathered on mounted police in public order or crowd control deployments, first in the context of football policing (Chapter 4) and then in other public order settings, including research undertaken with mounted police in music festivals and political demonstrations (Chapter 5). The report then reviews focus groups discussions undertaken with football fans and non-mounted police officers (Chapter 6) to understand how mounted police are experienced by members of the public and other police. Chapter 7 examines the costs of mounted policing through two separate costing exercises, and Chapter 8 presents the findings from the international questionnaire exercise. The conclusions of the study, presented in Chapter 9, provide a synthesis of the findings. The conclusions take into account data from across the multiple and mixed-methods approaches used in the project, which provide evidence of what mounted police do, and how their value may be measured and understood. The study concludes that mounted police provide a unique policing resource that generates positive police visibility in neighbourhood contexts as well as has the capacity to offer effective response to certain public order scenarios. Based on the data, the study suggest that the highest demonstrable value of mounted police is found in neighbourhood settings, which runs contrary to the predominant opinion among police that suggests that police on horseback are primarily a public order resource. In turn, the conclusions suggest that a reorientation in this predominant opinion is warranted.