Why horses and dogs have no place in protest policing

Humans have used horses as instruments of toil, power, and conquest since as far back as 3500 BCE.

Being on horseback made soldiers fast and strong. It also gave them a higher view than foot soldiers. Plus, before tanks, what could be scarier than a wall of horses charging at you? A strong cavalry could win wars.

These reasons for using horses in war apply to modern-day protests and riots.

But just because a practice has a long history doesn’t mean it’s ethical. In today’s blog, let’s explore the issues around welfare, oppression, and intersectionality.

From Overseer to Officer

The Metropolitan Police founded its mounted branch in 1760. Horse patrols would intercept highwaymen or criminals on the turnpike roads outside London. These police units were mobile, able to respond rapidly, and intimidating.

The model of mounted policing spread from Britain to its colonies throughout the 19th century (as this article by David Grundy explains). Law enforcement began to use horses to control how subjugated populations behaved. At the same time, overseers on plantations in the Antebellum South of America used them to “manage” enslaved people.

As Grundy discusses, overseers patrolled plantation borders on horseback. Their goal was to deter potential escapees and hunt down fugitive slaves. Within the system, horses’ lives were valued as equal to or worth more than the lives of the people who tended to them.

Sometimes, slaveholders would tie an enslaved person to a horse, playing on the fear that the horse might kick, trample, or drag them to death to exert even greater control. One wrong move, and the slave could die.

It’s not a great leap to say that law enforcement agencies still want us to feel this way when horses are present at protests. They want the crowd to wonder if the horses are under control and to fear what might happen if they’re not.

Horses become a familiar sight during protests

Horses largely disappeared from combat during the 20th century, but they continued to be used as a tool to intimidate and control people.

Mostly, this is within the context of protests and riots.

In 1968, the police used horses to charge the crowds in Grosvenor Square during anti-Vietnam war protests. The crowd retaliated by rolling marbles down the street to wrongfoot the horses. People reported that the horses reared onto their hind legs because they were scared or hurt.

During the London Poll Tax riot of March 1990, 20 mounted police rode their horses into the crowds. They claimed it was to split people into smaller groups and create calm. Projectiles such as bricks injured police, protestors, and horses alike. Eyewitnesses report that people in the crowd panicked. They had nowhere to run from the oncoming horses because the other end of Whitehall had been blocked. There are also reports of the horses panicking.

Armour-clad riot police and horses were highly visible at Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Social activist, Christopher ‘Soul’ Eubanks told Sentient Media that, “Police on horseback during [BLM] protests not only perpetuates the image of white supremacy but also [draws] parallels to the imagery of slave owners on horseback to enslave Blacks”.

In the same article, food activist Brenda Sanders says that “seeing cops riding astride these massive creatures positions horses as co-oppressors and further perpetuates negative feelings many oppressed people have towards animals. So instead of people seeing these animals as victims of human oppression, they’re seeing them as the enemy”.

Horses are sometimes used by protestors too

Horses are sometimes used as tools of protest rather than weaponised against it.

During the Victorian era, horses could be worked to death but were also symbols of elegance, power, and intelligence in art and literature.

This echoed, in many ways, how society viewed women at the time. In fact, women were often seen as having less value to human society than horses—an example of how speciesism can define status.

When suffragettes rode astride horses in suffrage parades, it was a strong visual statement that women were to be elevated in society. Significantly, no Black women were ever given the privilege of riding horseback in the parades, another clear statement.

In 1967, the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. Protestors interrupted the Kentucky Derby, America’s oldest and most prestigious horse race, in a move that attracted extensive public interest. Many feel that coverage of this protest contributed to the Fair Housing Act being passed into law.

More recently, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Black Lives Matter protestors in the US rode horses through the streets. The message was that they would ride high and proud in the face of oppression.

These few examples highlight the symbolic role of horses in protests. They convey messages of resistance, empowerment or status, as well as power, control, or intimidation.

Horses in protest policing situations today

Law enforcement agencies still use horses during riots and protests. We have touched on some of the reasons elsewhere in this article, but they’re worth repeating.

Having police officers on horseback gives them an overview of the crowd that isn’t possible on foot. If there is a disturbance, a horse can move faster. They can also cover more ground, go over more types of land, and bring more power than a lone human.

A wall of police on horseback is a powerful visual statement about who’s in control.

Humans see horses through a complex lens. They are willing to exploit and even eat them but also view them with sentimentality. Research suggests that people are six times more likely to engage with a police officer if the officer is on horseback. This is compared to if the officer is on foot. They’re also more likely to move out of the way for a horse due to fear or concern for the horse’s wellbeing.

Another reason is that police are less likely to hurt people while moving through a crowd on horseback than if they were in a car or on a motorbike.

That’s the official line, anyway.

Arguably, the use of horses by law enforcement endures because of the connection to past times when horses represented the ruling classes, state order, and public authority. It’s why ceremonies such as Trooping the Colour outside Buckingham Palace continue.

But all of these reasons relate to human politics, human society, and human power. What about the horses? What would they choose?

Conflict without consent – ethical considerations of using horses for protest policing

Conflict is dangerous. Whenever there are opposing sides, someone is at risk of getting hurt. Sadly, there are many examples of horses being injured during a protest. Here are a few:

• 2001: Police horse Wilson is stabbed during the Bradford riots.
• 6th June 2020: A horse (Rocky) is pelted with various objects at a Black Lives Matter protest and bolts in fear. His rider hits a low-hung traffic light and is thrown from the horse.
• 13th June 2020: A week later, three horses – Peroni, Patronus, and Parker – are hurt during further protests. Two police dogs are also injured.
• 24th April 2024: A horse is struck by an umbrella at a St George’s Day protest.

The agencies that deploy these animals say they are highly trained and resilient, and they only spend a small part of their time on active duty. Any risks to their lives are downplayed, and the media narrative in the event of problems almost always focuses on the threat to humans.

But using our fellow animals in this way has clear ethical implications.

A police officer or soldier chooses their job knowing the risks. They know what they might face during protests or rioting. A dog or horse isn’t able to consent, and without consent, surely, they are victims of exploitation.

As we’ve seen, one reason law enforcement still uses horses and dogs (more about them below) to stop protests is that they are unpredictable. A horse may get spooked and bolt, injuring anyone in their path. This knowledge is designed to quiet the crowd.

Apparently, horses go through rigorous training to enable them to stay calm in the face of a rioting crowd. This includes “nuisance training”, which, according to this article in Griggs Equestrian, consists of “subjecting the horses to people shouting, screaming, banging drums, waving flags, and even throwing tennis balls at the horses and riders!”

Nuisance training tries to achieve desensitization, but it’s almost impossible to replicate large protests in advance. This leaves horses at risk of being flooded with fear-inducing stimuli during a riot. Flooding can lead to trauma, reactive behaviours, and learned helplessness.

It’s not ethical for a being who cannot consent to be harmed. They are at risk of mental trauma, being hit, stabbings, or even having vehicles driven at them.

Is public opinion shifting?

In April 2024, many people watched the news in horror when five horses from the Household Calvary Mounted Regiment ran scared and hurt through the streets of London. They were spooked by noise from builders while out on exercise. Two of the horses, Vida and Quaker, collided with pedestrians and vehicles and needed surgery for their injuries.

On this occasion, the horses weren’t being used in a protest, but their exercise aimed to desensitise them to city sounds.

There was a public outcry. People saw with (blood red) clarity that the horses were not military gear or trained human police. They are sensitive, thinking beings forced into fight-or-flight by extreme fear.

Even mainstream news outlets such as The Mirror published articles openly challenging the ongoing practice of exploiting horses in the name of tradition and crowd control. The Mirror reported that a spokesperson for the Household Cavalry had pledged that the British Army will “strive to minimise the risk of this recurring” but, as the paper points out, the only way to do this is to end the use of our animal kin.

Risks to protestors

Some people oppose the use of horses and dogs in protests and riots, not because of ethical concerns about the use of animals who are unable to consent, but because they feel there is a significant risk to human safety.

Injuries to or by horses during protests are often framed to criticise the protestors, especially if they are from a marginalised group.

The mainstream media went into a frenzy – mainly to condemn the Black Lives Matter protests in London in June 2020 – when Police Horse Rocky bolted after being pelted with bottles, flares, and other projectiles. As he ran, the police officer riding him hit a low-hanging traffic light and was thrown from the saddle. As Rocky fled, he collided with a nursing student called Jessie Tieti Mawutu, injuring her in the process.

An article in Oxford University’s independent student newspaper reports that when Mawutu attempted to complain about the incident, she was told that her complaint could not be processed as it was “a protest that had resulted in violence leading the horse to react in such a way”.

However, witnesses report the protest was peaceful until the police arrived on horseback. Their presence may have served to “needlessly escalate an otherwise peaceful situation through their pure physicality”.

Arguably, it’s the police who put horses and protestors at risk by bringing horses into already tense situations.

Dogs and crowd control

Throughout this article, we’ve focused on the use of horses as a tool for crowd control. We must acknowledge that many of the points also relate to how dogs are used by police in protests and riots.

To give an example, in May 1963, the police in Birmingham, Alabama, in the US, used dogs to attack crowds of Black people demonstrating against racial segregation. For many, the dogs became a living, breathing symbol of police brutality.

In response, picketers demanded “rights, not bites”, while protestors in New York referred to the “dog government of Alabama”.

The article linked above shows that although the “police dog” is a relatively modern innovation, many people feel the echoes back to slavery when bounty hunters used bloodhounds to capture escaped enslaved people.

Again, dogs used by law enforcement serve as a physical and symbolic presence to exert control. People see dogs as devoted and loyal guardians – “man’s best friend” – who can be trained to attack with force and precision. Equally, many believe that a dog can be unpredictable, ferocious, and even life-threatening.

The ethical problems of using dogs in this context are the same as those of horses. Dogs cannot give consent and yet are frequently harmed in “the line of duty.”

What are the alternatives for crowd control?

If we accept that there must be a law enforcement presence at protests, despite this sometimes escalating the conflict, what are the alternatives to using horses and dogs for crowd control?

Nowadays, many non-lethal weapons, de-escalation tactics, and community policing strategies can minimise conflict during a protest. Drones can give a raised vantage point over the crowd and monitor crowd activity, even at night.

These methods prioritise the welfare of all species.

Each time a horse or dog attends a protest or riot, they face injury or death – something to which they cannot consent.

The exploitation of animals by law enforcement is part of a broader system of injustice. Indeed, we cannot tell the story of “police” horses and dogs without exploring the oppression of various marginalised human groups.

It isn’t enough for people to say, “But this is how things have always been done”. Tradition doesn’t justify ongoing cruelty.

So, what can we do? We can make a difference by:

• Writing to our politicians and law enforcement agencies
• Signing petitions on this issue
• Amplifying the voices of those campaigning to end the use of animals for law enforcement
• Sharing stories that highlight the sentience of our fellow animals so that people question the rights and wrongs of inserting them into human conflicts