The Metropolitan Police Mounted Branch is the

mounted police Mounted police are police who patrol on horseback or camelback. Their day-to-day function is typically picturesque or ceremonial, but they are also employed in crowd control because of their mobile mass and height advantage and increasingly in t ...

branch of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

Metropolitan Police The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...

. It is part of

Met Operations Met Operations, also known as Met Ops, is one of the four business groups which forms the Metropolitan Police Service and is responsible for providing operational support services.. It was created during the 2018-19 restructuring of the service, am ...

History

The Bow Street Horse Patrol was formed in 1763, but ceased after eighteen months when funding ran out. Revived in 1805, it was attached to the new Metropolitan Police in 1836 and formally merged into it three years later via Chapter VI of that year's Metropolitan Police Act. Mounted patrols from the Metropolitan Police's stations continued, but the modern Mounted Branch was only formalised in 1918 by Percy Laurie, a retired

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...

officer.Mounted Police
''Equus'' (13 January 2003).

Operations

Figures released by the Met under a

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...

request showed that the annual number of police horses in the MPS Mounted Branch Unit in calendar years 2009 to 2018 ranged from a low of 100 to a high of 116.Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.19.002021: Information about MPS dogs and horses
Metropolitan Police Service. As of 2016, the annual average cost incurred by the police force was £5,558 per horse, not including stabling, and there were 142 police officers qualified to ride. The total budget for the mounted unit was £9,969,736 in 2018. The police horses used are typically either half

thoroughbred The Thoroughbred is a horse breed best known for its use in horse racing. Although the word ''thoroughbred'' is sometimes used to refer to any breed of purebred horse, it technically refers only to the Thoroughbred breed. Thoroughbreds are ...

and half draft breed, or three-quarters thoroughbred and one-quarter draft breed. The

police horse Mounted police are police who patrol on horseback or camelback. Their day-to-day function is typically picturesque or ceremonial, but they are also employed in crowd control because of their mobile mass and height advantage and increasingly in t ...

s are used for patrols of London's main parks; for ceremonial events; and for

crowd control Crowd control is a public security practice in which large crowds are managed in order to prevent the outbreak of crowd crushes, affray, fights involving drunk and disorderly people or riots. Crowd crushes in particular can cause many hundre ...

at events such as football matches.Police horses back on beat as Hyde Park stables re-open
''Evening Standard'' (27 April 2010).Chris Giacomantonio, Ben Bradford, Matthew Davies & Richard Martin

RAND Europe (2014).Jill Insley
A working life: the mounted police officer
''The Guardian'' (9 December 2011). A 2014 RAND Europe/

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

Centre for Criminology study found: "While mounted police in the UK are traditionally thought of as public-order policing resources, deployment data show that they spend between 60-70 per cent of their time in local area patrols, and 10-20 per cent of their time in public order work, with the remainder spent in activities such as ceremonial deployments." A typical daily patrol is 9–10 miles, but a police horse escort of the

King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery The King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, is a ceremonial unit of the British Army, quartered at Woolwich. It is a mounted unit and all of its soldiers are trained to care for and drive teams of six horses, each team pulling a First World War-er ...

from its

St John's Wood St John's Wood is a district in the City of Westminster, London, lying 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Charing Cross. Traditionally the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough of Marylebone, it extends east to west from ...

barracks to

central London Central London is the innermost part of London, in England, spanning several boroughs. Over time, a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of Central London for statistics, urban planning and local government. Its characteris ...

is 16 miles. The Branch has eight

stables A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals and livestock. There are many different types of stables in use today; the ...

:MPS Stables - Supply & Delivery Of Feed, Forage & Bedding
(18 December 2019). Hyde Park, Lewisham Police Station,Sarah Trotter
Meet the horses at Lewisham Police Station
''News Hopper'' (30 January 2014).

Great Scotland Yard Great Scotland Yard is a street in the St. James's district of Westminster, London, connecting Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall. By the 16th century, this 'yard', which was then an open space for the Palace of Whitehall, was fronted by buil ...

Hammersmith Hammersmith is a district of West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London ...

West Hampstead West Hampstead is an area in the London Borough of Camden in north-west London. Mainly defined by the railway stations of the same name, it is situated between Childs Hill to the north, Frognal and Hampstead to the north-east, Swiss Cottage ...

, Bow Road, Kings Cross, and Imber Court in

East Molesey Molesey is a district of two twin towns, East Molesey and West Molesey, in the Borough of Elmbridge, Surrey, England, and is situated on the south bank of the River Thames. East and West Molesey share a high street, and there is a second reta ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant ur ...

. The horses are trained at the latter site. The

City of London Police The City of London Police is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the City of London, including the Middle and Inner Temples. The force responsible for law enforcement within the remainder of the London region, o ...

, which is separate from the Met Police, also maintains a mounted unit.

References

{{Metropolitan Police Mounted Branch Mounted police