Black Man Led Behind Horseback Police Using Rope

[LSUmiss]

Your response to this incident is based purely on your emotions, your feelings that racism is so ingrained in these men that they aren't even aware of it.
My response is logical and more intellectual- I know they could be racists but I also know that without evidence, or data, you can't say they are with 100% certainty. I can see beyond the shock value headlines and pictures and know there is more to the story. A large number of the population can't, and the media plays to them- the emotional, the less logical and yes, the less intellectual. They are reactionary, they are not thinking any deeper than their feelings. If I hit a nerve, well then maybe it is you that is on the defense.
Me, I'm not defensive at all, I'm participating in a discussion by stating facts.

None of us are discussing facts. We are discussing the possibilities. You seem to think that anything other than the possibility you presented is emotional or reactionary. And, it is a tactic to dismiss someone’s opinion when you don’t agree with them as emotional and not intellectual b/c it typical makes ppl annoyed enough that they then become emotional & you can say “see”.

 

[SaintsManiac]

None of us are discussing facts. We are discussing the possibilities. You seem to think that anything other than the possibility you presented is emotional or reactionary. And, it is a tactic to dismiss someone’s opinion when you don’t agree with them as emotional and not intellectual b/c it typical makes ppl annoyed enough that they then become emotional & you can say “see”.

I just don't understand when having emotions became a bad thing? Sorry, but I will not go through life as a block of ice. If we all got emotional maybe we could end some of this hate.

 

[Dizneefamily+4]

Racist? If you know American history at ALL, then it definitely comes across as such - especially in the south. So definitely tone-deaf. And appalling whether racist or not.

 

[LSUmiss]

I just don't understand when having emotions became a bad thing? Sorry, but I will not go through life as a block of ice. If we all got emotional maybe we could end some of this hate.

That’s true too. Of course, it’s used to say that some of us are all too emotional to see the “facts” clearly.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

To say the US was founded on slavery sounds like a slogan from an elementary school text book and ignores an enormous amount of history.

And to ignore the fact that the constitution was operationally pro slavery is jingoism.

 

[tcufrog]

Horses? Why are there police on horses?

My city has mounted police. Here's an explanation of what they do:

Mounted teams can always be seen in the Stockyards areas; however, two-officer teams are assigned to other sections of the city as needed. The teams are highly visible, very effective, and go wherever they are needed. Their special maneuverability enables them to be effective at area malls, hospital parking lots, downtown, or residential areas. The mounted units are especially useful in searching rugged terrain for lost or deceased persons.

Horses have been used for riot and crowd control for centuries. The crowd control training is arduous and very demanding for both horse and rider. The Fort Worth Mounted Unit conducts training in these techniques every month and is ready any day to assemble and, with the help of SWAT and other crowd-control officers, to help deal with any such problem. The mounted unit has come a long way indeed from the day of the single volunteer officer.

Here's a photo of our mounted police. Even though they wear cowboy hats I would hope they'd never attach rope to someone in order to arrest them. This isn't the Old West anymore.

 

[tex1989]

I spend a lot of time in Galveston as we live 30 miles from the Island. I am in no way condoning what they did. Common sense would tell you that unless you live under a rock the current overall social climate would say don't do this. The officers should have used common sense, they did not.

But as we rush to judgement based on the initial pictures and reports, make sure you get all the facts. Even though it will not change opinions, or the visual shock of the situation at least it explains a few things. The procedure of handling people that have been arrested by a mounted officer is that they call for transport for the detainee. However if the transport is not available then there is an established procedure and as stupid as it sounds what they did was the procedure taught during mounted patrol training (I know stupid, but it the training). I know mounted police in both Houston and Galveston and it is part of their training. So these officers called for transport, but the dispatching supervisor denied transport because there was not a car available. The arrest was made literally 350 yards from the facility they were taking him to. If the officers used common sense one should have walked him there on foot. As far as a horse spooking, yes it can happen, hence the reason they are trained to drop the lead to the arrestee if it happens and never wrap it around your hand. So as people say they should be fired, well okay but they would be reinstated with back pay really quickly when they pointed to the procedure in their training manual. So the chief apoligized, committed to changing the training and the procedure and will counsal the officers.

Mistakes were made and they have committed to correcting them. Other circumstances are involved and again I am in no way saying they justified the situation in any way but here they are. The person they arrested should be going to a mental care facility, not to jail. He has done this before, he has been arrested before but for nothing major but more related to his mental condition. He fails to obey requests from police and basically was under the belief that he lived at a house there and refused to leave the yard and area. The owners had complained numerous times and the police had talked to him numerous times but he always returned.

I am not defending the officers actions but I would not want to be a policeman in Galveston. It is a party place and has become so expensive that most of the long time residents have had to move to the mainland to afford living in the area. Most of the houses are weekend only and in the older parts of the island where many of the minorities live in run down house, investors are buying properties for $30k and renovating them and selling them for $250K. You literally have the renovated house that a wealthy couple from Houston spend weekends in on the same street with house that are about to fall down. Literally the long time lower income residents are being pushed out of their neighborhoods. Police on the Island spend a lot of their time just listening to the complaints of the weekend residents, dealing with drunks, and crazy beach goers. The whole place is a recipe for disaster.

It is not a good situation overall.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

He fails to obey requests from police and basically was under the belief that he lived at a house there and refused to leave the yard and area.

I appreciate your information.

This statement above reenforces my original thought--if you have a frequent flyer who is known not to obey police it wouldn't be prudent to do what they did. Resisting arrest can go bad really quickly and the way they handled it meant they had no real control, especially if as you say you're supposed to just let the line/rope/whatever they are calling it go.

I guess maybe the question is..since, as you say, this is procedure just how many times has this happened?

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I spend a lot of time in Galveston as we live 30 miles from the Island. I am in no way condoning what they did. Common sense would tell you that unless you live under a rock the current overall social climate would say don't do this. The officers should have used common sense, they did not.

But as we rush to judgement based on the initial pictures and reports, make sure you get all the facts. Even though it will not change opinions, or the visual shock of the situation at least it explains a few things. The procedure of handling people that have been arrested by a mounted officer is that they call for transport for the detainee. However if the transport is not available then there is an established procedure and as stupid as it sounds what they did was the procedure taught during mounted patrol training (I know stupid, but it the training). I know mounted police in both Houston and Galveston and it is part of their training. So these officers called for transport, but the dispatching supervisor denied transport because there was not a car available. The arrest was made literally 350 yards from the facility they were taking him to. If the officers used common sense one should have walked him there on foot. As far as a horse spooking, yes it can happen, hence the reason they are trained to drop the lead to the arrestee if it happens and never wrap it around your hand. So as people say they should be fired, well okay but they would be reinstated with back pay really quickly when they pointed to the procedure in their training manual. So the chief apoligized, committed to changing the training and the procedure and will counsal the officers.

Mistakes were made and they have committed to correcting them. Other circumstances are involved and again I am in no way saying they justified the situation in any way but here they are. The person they arrested should be going to a mental care facility, not to jail. He has done this before, he has been arrested before but for nothing major but more related to his mental condition. He fails to obey requests from police and basically was under the belief that he lived at a house there and refused to leave the yard and area. The owners had complained numerous times and the police had talked to him numerous times but he always returned.

I am not defending the officers actions but I would not want to be a policeman in Galveston. It is a party place and has become so expensive that most of the long time residents have had to move to the mainland to afford living in the area. Most of the houses are weekend only and in the older parts of the island where many of the minorities live in run down house, investors are buying properties for $30k and renovating them and selling them for $250K. You literally have the renovated house that a wealthy couple from Houston spend weekends in on the same street with house that are about to fall down. Literally the long time lower income residents are being pushed out of their neighborhoods. Police on the Island spend a lot of their time just listening to the complaints of the weekend residents, dealing with drunks, and crazy beach goers. The whole place is a recipe for disaster.

It is not a good situation overall.

This is a really good post. Some of the things you mention I have read, but this pieces it all together as far as what the actual policies of the police department and mounted unit are. I'm not sure how the officers could be (or should be) fired if they were following their department's policies. Challenging that in court would likely be a cinch, but in the meantime, whole careers of otherwise good officers would've been destroyed. (The police chief has said that these same officers are ones that give out blankets to the homeless - and probably do more for them, too - in the middle of winter.) Obviously the issue is bigger than them; departmental policies and procedures need to be updated. And that's not always easy when you are dealing with officers that rely just on horses.

What needed to happen seems to me to be a judgement of the officers. Like you said, perhaps one officer walking with him and another leading the other horse, or perhaps waiting until a car was available. But to what degree are officers allowed to break or change policy themselves? Maybe (like the NYPD officers who got doused with water) they thought if they did, they'd get in trouble that way. Conceivably if they waited, they would be unavailable if they were suddenly called elsewhere, and they'd get in trouble for that, etc. It's damned if you do and damned if you don't.

But I agree it was definitely a "bad look". Shocking, really. I think the blame, though, shouldn't lie with the individual officers if they were following the policy set forth by the department.

 

[tex1989]

I don't think that there are stats on how often this happens and if there are I am sure they do not publicize them. I have on a few occasions actually seen it happen however I have to admit that is was during Mardis Gra and it was so crowded along the Strand that no police vehicles could move so they took drunk out of hand people three blocks to the jail this way. Never saw any of those pictures show up on social media, but then again you don't see a lot of those mentions from New Orleans at that time of year either.

 

[tex1989]

I thought the point that lack of judgement could have also been subconsciously shaped by subtle biases. Maybe they could claim they were "following procedure" (although the Chief said it was really designed for crowd control) but many would wonder if they've ever done this before, and especially if they'd ever had a single suspect moved this way who wasn't black.

What they did was given the current climate was wrong, yes. But to answer your question as to if they have ever done this to other suspects who were not black, the answer is yes. I have witnessed it on several occasions and actually I have seen Black, White, Latino and if memory serves me correctly an exceptionally drunk and loud Asian one time. Of course no pictures on social media only because it happened during Mardis Gras and there is so much going on then that unusual things don't get widely shared.

 

[bcla]

What they did was given the current climate was wrong, yes. But to answer your question as to if they have ever done this to other suspects who were not black, the answer is yes. I have witnessed it on several occasions and actually I have seen Black, White, Latino and if memory serves me correctly an exceptionally drunk and loud Asian one time. Of course no pictures on social media only because it happened during Mardis Gras and there is so much going on then that unusual things don't get widely shared.

That's the "crowd control" situation that the Chief of the Galveston PD said it was designed for. And of course stuff gets shared during Mardi Gras. However, there's probably so much that it's hard to filter out anything in particular.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don't think that there are stats on how often this happens and if there are I am sure they do not publicize them. I have on a few occasions actually seen it happen however I have to admit that is was during Mardis Gra and it was so crowded along the Strand that no police vehicles could move so they took drunk out of hand people three blocks to the jail this way. Never saw any of those pictures show up on social media, but then again you don't see a lot of those mentions from New Orleans at that time of year either.

Thank you again for your information.

 

[DietCoke18]

Horrible. There is no need for this “procedure” in 2019.

 

[LSUmiss]

I don't think that there are stats on how often this happens and if there are I am sure they do not publicize them. I have on a few occasions actually seen it happen however I have to admit that is was during Mardis Gra and it was so crowded along the Strand that no police vehicles could move so they took drunk out of hand people three blocks to the jail this way. Never saw any of those pictures show up on social media, but then again you don't see a lot of those mentions from New Orleans at that time of year either.

Not doubting what you saw with your own eyes. But typically the horses may be used to isolate the person to make the arrest & then there is a paddy wagon parked that arrested ppl sit in til they can be transported to OPP. I don’t see how they could even do what was done in TX on a crowded fr qrtr street.

 

[dish rag]

Not doubting what you saw with your own eyes. But typically the horses may be used to isolate the person to make the arrest & then there is a paddy wagon parked that arrested ppl sit in til they can be transported to OPP. I don’t see how they could even do what was done in TX on a crowded fr qrtr street.

Paddy wagon? Do you know how offensive that is?

 

[LSUmiss]

Paddy wagon? Do you know how offensive that is?

Well, I’m Irish so yeah, but it also doesn’t offend me. And, whether it should be named that or not still, it’s the actual name of what they use during Mardi Gras the qrtr. I didn’t name it.

 

[dish rag]

Well, I’m Irish so yeah, but it also doesn’t offend me. And, whether it should be named that or not still, it’s the actual name of what they use during Mardi Gras the qrtr. I didn’t name it.

But you used it, it's offensive.

 

[LSUmiss]

But you used it, it's offensive.

Well, first, there is some debate of it is actually really offensive. Google it & you’ll find articles with that info. And, at the risk of going down a rabbit hole, I think ppl who are part of the supposed offended group have a right to decide if a term is offensive to them. I had a Asian friend who was older who referred to himself as “Oriental”. I certainly would never call him that, but he had the right to refer to himself as whatever he wanted to. Another example, the Zulu Mardi Gras Krewe (an all black group) in NOLA paints their faces black & does their makeup to resemble an African tribe. It is not the same a “black face” but “activists” (mostly from other areas) tried to pressure the club to stop this practice & told them it was racist. They declined to stop the practice & cited they had the right to decide what was racist for themselves.

 

[L&Lfan]

I’m gay and I have no problem referring to myself as a fag or a queer. In fact, I embrace it with pride!