Detroit's police horses spared a likely death, headed to homes

September 24, 2005

BY KIM NORTH SHINE
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER



A plan to sell the nine four-legged members of the Detroit Police Department's recently disbanded mounted unit at auction, where they almost certainly would have been sold for horsemeat, appears to be dead.


"We hope it is," Dale Bender, who has spent 24 of his 34 years on the police force with the horses, said Thursday. "Nothing is for sure with this department. Things keep changing day by day. But we've been told the horses will not be sold; that we can farm them out to good homes."


Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings, through Deputy Chief James Tate, a department spokesman, would not provide details except to say: "We are working on a proposal to transition the horses."


The mounted unit is one casualty of citywide budget cuts. With the decision to dissolve the unit came the decision of what to do with Sachem, Sonny, Sable, Outlaw, Plug, Muskie, Cohise, Strider and Bay Reo.


If the horses were to be auctioned, their likely destination would be a Canadian slaughterhouse and then European or Japanese meat markets, according to the U.S. Meat Export Federation.


"These horses would almost certainly be sold for meat," said Barbara Baker, the director of Horse's Haven, a Howell-based rescue group that has bought horses at auctions rather than see them go to meat buyers.


It's likely that the city would have gotten no more than $500 a horse at an auction, Baker said.


Bully-Cummings considered sending them to an auction, Bender said.


But once the chief learned what their fate would be, she reconsidered, said Eileen Liska, a Lansing legislative lobbyist for the Michigan Humane Society.


Liska, police officers and a group of wealthy animal lovers urged the department to give the horses a future.


"These horses served honorably and they deserved an honorable retirement," said Liska.


Bender and Liska said they have been told Detroit's horses can be divided among pastures owned by three mounted officers, a horse-owning sister of one of the officers and General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz and his wife, Denise.


The horses could begin moving as soon as Monday, Bender said. The horses have been kept in stables at Rouge Park.


Of the unit's five officers, two will go back to patrol, one will work security at 36th District Court and two others will be in supervisory positions at police precincts, Bender said.