San Jose police are going to have to wait until next year to potentially get back in the saddle.
The City Council on Tuesday voted 6-4-1 to again hold off on reinstating the San Jose Police Department’s Horse Mounted Unit, which operated for more than 100 years until its 2018 disbanding due to financial and staffing constraints. Officials previously shelved the plan in August until it was revived this month by the reconciliation of a dramatic labor dispute between the police union and City Hall.
Councilmembers Peter Ortiz, Rosemary Kamei, Anthony Tordillos, Domingo Candelas, Pamela Campos and David Cohen voted in favor of deferring the request to next year’s budget approval, citing a projected $25 million deficit. Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilmembers George Casey, Michael Mulcahy and Bien Doan voted against the delay. Councilmember Pam Foley was absent.
Mahan, police leaders and business advocates hailed the idea as bringing a more visible and humanizing police presence to downtown. Meanwhile, activists — including other downtown business owners — questioned how horses would help more pressing issues, such as break-ins. They raised concerns the patrols could be used to crack down on future peaceful protests, with some saying horseback policing hearkens back to early American slave-catching.
“I think that having more tools in the toolbox is great, but I will say I also have experience with horses in my past and they’re not cheap,” Kamei said at the meeting. “They’re really really expensive and once you get them on, it’s very very difficult to just make them go away. This year we had to cut senior food and we were scrambling to find some dollars here and there.”
Mahan said councilmembers had more than enough time to do their own research.
“We explicitly deferred this already once to take the time to do the research because, at the end of the day, even if we’re uncomfortable, we ultimately are asked to make a binary decision,” Mahan said.
He said councilmembers and residents have consistently made public safety a priority — and pushed back on concerns horses would enable more aggressive and threatening policing.
“I think we do have a department that’s very open about the history and imperfections and warts and outright abuses of policing historically,” Mahan said. “A department that has disciplined and even fired members of its own department for serious transgressions when appropriate.”
San Jose has had a tumultuous relationship with officer accountability. The council earlier this year said “No” to a request by the city’s independent police auditor to review every use of force case annually. The department’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 led to million-dollar lawsuit settlements arising from police severely injuring demonstrators.
The police department’s proposal calls for a one-time investment of $390,000 for initial equipment, six horses, two trucks, two trailers, uniforms and initial training for horseback officers. It also requests an initial investment of $31,000 in the program’s first year for horse feed, vet services, farrier services and stable maintenance. Police Chief Paul Joseph said the program would amount to zero additional personnel costs for the department because it would use existing downtown patrol assignments.
Assistant Police Chief Brian Shab said officers on horseback have an elevated line of sight, allowing them to observe broader areas and serve as visible deterrents to crime. He also said mounted officers are uniquely effective at relationship building — attracting people’s attention and conversations.
“The Horse Mounted Unit strengthens trust, provides visibility and humanizes policing in a way that quite frankly patrol models just can’t,” Shab said at the meeting.
The idea brought dueling remarks of support and protest between downtown business advocates and community activists.
“An increase of visible police presence will have a direct effect on both the realities and perceptions of safety in downtown San Jose,” Alan “Gumby” Marques, president of the San Jose Downtown Association and Heroes Martial Arts owner, said at the meeting. “I’ve been a downtown business owner long enough to remember when we had the mounted patrols, and somehow seeing them ride by and click-clack down the street by me always gave me a sense of pride in my city, a sense of comfort.”
But Wendy Bravo, co-owner and head chef of Fox Tale Fermentation Project, spoke in “absolute opposition.”
“As a small business owner in downtown this is a ridiculous proposal that offers no value to downtown businesses and is purely a PR stunt that does nothing to reduce crime,” Bravo said. “We need people trained in care, deescalation and dignity. We need the city to allocate funds toward helping people — not harming, disappearing and scaring them.”
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X.
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