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Athens Police Department's Mounted Unit turns 20, prepares for new members

On Labor Day weekend in 1996, the officers that would soon become the Athens Police Department's Mounted Unit gathered on a farm for their first lesson.

“None of us had any idea,” APD Officer Neal Dicken said.

Dicken was an officer with the Ohio University Police Department at the time. He took off work to attend that day, and submitted a job application to APD.

“Five months after this was taken, I was working at the city,” Dicken said, pointing to a Polaroid picture taken on that Labor Day.

Twenty years later, three of the original officers have left the unit, and most of the others are approaching retirement. Some of the original horses have died. The officers also no longer fund all of their activities and gear themselves.

“When we started, it was all we gave, gave, gave to get the program going,” Dicken said. “We donated and donated.”

The City of Athens began leasing the horses in 1999, Dicken said. The horses' owners earn $12.50 for each hour the horses are working. The salary hasn’t gone up with inflation, but Dicken said it is better than nothing.

The city shoes the horses and pays their veterinary bills for injuries they may sustain in the line of duty. The city also started paying for saddles after someone hurled a chunk of asphalt and damaged Dicken’s own saddle. The person who threw it was aiming for a police captain’s head, Dicken said, but instead struck Dicken’s leg, his saddle and his horse at the same time.

At the time the unit first began transitioning from a public relations unit, a bar named "The Nickelodeon" tended to cause problems at closing time, Dicken said. When bargoers left for the night, they would crowd Union Street.

Cruisers couldn’t pass. So the department sent out the mounted patrol. 

“They way we do it with horses, it’s kind of like a snowplow,” Dicken said “So we’d push them back off the street that way, and then we’d go across the street and just set there. If they came back on the street, then right back off the street they’d go.”

APD, the Columbus Police Department and other law enforcement agencies have agreements in place to send mounted officers across jurisdictions during large events and crises. The mounted unit travels across the country and even internationally for training as well, maintaining a network of connections and horse knowledge.

The styles vary, Dicken said. Some departments use their horses for crowd control the way Athens does. In Oklahoma City, however, where he went to instructor school, the horses herd cattle more than they herd crowds.

“They’re cowboys and they have stockyards and the cattle get loose, and they have to rope the cattle and bring the cattle back,” he said. 

Dicken has trained in Canada with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He said the mounted police there do mostly public relations work and little crowd control.

“Most of their officers don’t even know one end of the horse from another,” he said of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “I didn’t realize that. That was kind of very unique.”

In the 20 years it has been active, the unit has seen its share of mishaps. People hurl beer bottles at the horses pretty regularly. One horse had to retire after a vehicle clipped it. Dicken’s horse once ran over a girl as he and other officers cleared an Athens street.

“This girl, she sees us coming down through there and she turns her back on the horse right as the horse is coming up,” he said. “I still have the video somewhere. She is a blur going down and hitting the bricks.”

The girl suffered a broken ankle, Dicken later found out. He kept riding.

“I couldn’t stop, because I’m in formation,” he said. “(If I stop) the horse is going to get injured, I’m going to get injured, someone is going to get injured.”

Officer Destry Flick said he came to APD in 2005 to join the mounted unit. He said he enjoys it because it is a different kind of policing. People stop to talk to him when he is on top of his horse more than they would otherwise. 

Flick said the unit usually patrols on weekends and during big events.

“(The unit provides) excellent crowd control, for one,” Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle said. “Public relations. Pretty much we utilize them in the Uptown area, (and for a) pretty visible presence on Court Street.” 

Within five years, Flick said he thinks the original officers of the unit will retire. Because Flick is one of the younger officers, training the new generation will fall on him.

“It’s always going to be a task, trying to find people who are interested in it, who are willing to take the expense, who are willing to take the time to be proficient with the horses,” Flick said. “I think it will work out. There’s enough interest.”

Dicken provided a fellow officer with a horse this year to keep him from retiring, because both of his horses had to retire. He fought early retirement himself 10 years ago when his horse, Betty, wiped out as the two were “chasing a drunk down Palmer Street,” he said.

“They said there was so much dust it looked like a car wreck,” he said. “Betty got up, not a mark on her. She’s like, ‘Come on, Dad, let’s go get him.’ “

The fall shattered his wrist on his firing hand. Doctors told him he would never work as a police officer again.

“Three operations,” he said. “They put metal in, took metal out. I had enough that I could’ve taken disability and never worked again. But my pride and joy is the mounted unit.”

@baileygallion

bg272614@ohio.edu

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