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Assessing the Value of Mounted Police Units in the UK Making and Breaking Barriers Assessing the value of mounted police units in the UK Chris Giacomantonio, Ben Bradford, Matthew Davies and Richard Martin For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/rr830 While the use of mounted police (i.e. police horses and riders) can be traced back to before the advent of the modern police service in 1829, very little is known about the actual work of mounted police from either academic or practitioner standpoints. Police horses are thought to have unique operational and symbolic value, particularly in public order policing (making barriers) and community engagement (breaking barriers) Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif., and Cambridge, UK deployments. They may represent a calming presence or, and potentially at the same time, an imposing threat of force. Yet, the relationship between the use of police horses and broader notions of policing by consent in the UK is presently unknown, and all R® is a registered trademark. evidence for these claims is anecdotal at best. In recent years, mounted units have come under resource scrutiny in the UK due to austerity measures. Some forces have eliminated their mounted capacities altogether, while others have developed collaborative or mutual assistance arrangements with © Copyright 2015 RAND Corporation and University of Oxford neighbouring forces. The relative costs and benefits of the available options – maintaining units, merging and centralising mounted resources or eliminating them in whole or part – cannot at present be assessed confidently by individual forces or by national coordinating agencies such as the Home Office, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC). This research makes a timely contribution to pressing decisions regarding the future of mounted units, and should be of interest to police managers including mounted All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the section, public order, and neighbourhood commanders, as well as Chief Constables and sponsor. Police and Crime Commissioners. It will also be of value to academics and researchers interested in a wide range of public policing issues including public trust and legitimacy, RAND Europe is an independent, not-for-profit policy research organisation that aims to improve policy and police visibility and public order police work. decisionmaking in the public interest through research and analysis. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. The research undertaken for this project was multi-method and exploratory in nature. Beginning in February 2013, the project has examined mounted police in multiple deployment scenarios including neighbourhood policing, football policing and public order policing in festival and demonstration settings. This project also includes research activities designed to understand the costs of mounted policing, and a survey of senior mounted police officers in other countries to understand the potential transferability of these findings. This report presents a summary of key findings and conclusions from the main report, and Support RAND full details of the methods and underlying data can be found in the main report document. Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute This research was commissioned by the ACPO Mounted Working Group (MWG) through Avon and Somerset Constabulary, to assess the value of mounted police units in the UK across various deployment scenarios. It has received funding and contributions www.rand.org from Avon and Somerset Constabulary, Gloucestershire Constabulary, the Metropolitan www.randeurope.org Police Service, the University of Oxford’s John Fell Fund and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme. The project has been undertaken through the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, in partnership with RAND Europe. Preface While the use of mounted police (i.e. police horses and riders) can be traced back to before the advent of the modern police service in 1829, very little is known about the actual work of mounted police from either academic or practitioner standpoints. Police horses are thought to have unique operational and symbolic value, particularly in public order policing (making barriers) and community engagement (breaking barriers) deployments. They may represent a calming presence or, and potentially at the same time, an imposing threat of force. Yet, the relationship between the use of police horses and broader notions of policing by consent in the UK is presently unknown, and all evidence for these claims is anecdotal at best. In recent years, mounted units have come under resource scrutiny in the UK due to austerity measures. Some forces have eliminated their mounted capacities altogether, while others have developed collaborative or mutual assistance arrangements with neighbouring forces. The relative costs and benefits of the available options – maintaining units, merging and centralising mounted resources or eliminating them in whole or part – cannot at present be assessed confidently by individual forces or by national coordinating agencies such as the Home Office, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC). This research makes a timely contribution to pressing decisions regarding the future of mounted units, and should be of interest to police managers including mounted section, public order, and neighbourhood commanders, as well as Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners. It will also be of value to academics and researchers interested in a wide range of public policing issues including public trust and legitimacy, police visibility and public order police work. The research undertaken for this project was multi-method and exploratory in nature. Beginning in February 2013, the project has examined mounted police in multiple deployment scenarios including neighbourhood policing, football policing and public order policing in festival and demonstration settings. This project also includes research activities designed to understand the costs of mounted policing, and a survey of senior mounted police officers in other countries to understand the potential transferability of these findings. This research was commissioned by the ACPO Mounted Working Group (MWG) through Avon and Somerset Constabulary, to assess the value of mounted police units in the UK across various deployment scenarios. It has received funding and contributions from Avon and Somerset Constabulary, Gloucestershire Constabulary, the Metropolitan Police Service, the University of Oxford’s John Fell Fund and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme. iii RAND Europe The project has been undertaken through the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford in partnership with RAND Europe. iv Abstract 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
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