The city of New York has discovered that using horses to help police the city is a boon of such magnitude that it has decided to double the number of equine public servants in its stable. It seems that an officer on a horse is not only more visible and imposing. He�s even more likable. A horse is also wonderfully inexpensive to maintain. As The New York Times reports, the dutiful subordinates require �$10 a day for hay, grain, and bedding material.� A spokesman for the family in Canada that trains the horses stated, �They can gallop through traffic, go the wrong way up one-way streets, and they�re great for community relations. I mean, you can�t exactly pet a cop car. Or a police dog, for that matter.� Petting a friendly horse aside, discussion of their ability to speed here and there, an inevitable concomitant of law enforcement in Gotham, leads us to the contemplation of what we, as cringing pedestrians, would rather be run over by � a police car or a police horse. We are not expert in the comparison, but if pressed, we think we�d choose the horse. While they weigh about 1,000 pounds apiece, the average patrol car weighs quite a few multiples of that. But it seems to us the real deciding factor is choosing between being flattened by one to four tires as opposed to being stomped on by one to four hooves. All things considered, we think that, by choosing the horse, we might expect a somewhat higher rate of survival.
