The sight of po­lice pa­trolling the streets of down­town Port-of-Spain may not be un­com­mon, but of­fi­cers on horse­back and with dogs took to the streets on Fri­day morn­ing in a bid to re­store con­fi­dence among the pub­lic.

As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Wayne Mys­tar, who is al­so in charge of the Mount­ed Branch, led a con­tin­gent of 18 of­fi­cers from the branch along Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James to Port-of-Spain dur­ing a show of force ex­er­cise.

Mem­bers of the De­fence Force were al­so part of the ex­er­cise.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the pa­trol, Mys­tar said the ex­er­cise formed part of Op­er­a­tion Blue Line—a spe­cial an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

He said the ex­er­cise was ini­ti­at­ed to try to fos­ter clos­er ties with the com­mu­ni­ty by pre­sent­ing of­fi­cers in a more per­son­able light.

He said while of­fi­cers of the Mount­ed Branch had tra­di­tion­al­ly been used as a means of crowd con­trol for large pub­lic events, the unit was al­so valu­able in com­mu­ni­ty-polic­ing ini­tia­tives.

Mys­tar said, “Pret­ty soon, we’ll be see­ing hors­es pa­trolling the streets of Port-of-Spain. We are con­cen­trat­ing on those ar­eas we have one or two chal­lenges with. We have the Ca­nine Branch which is con­duct­ing search­es with mem­bers of the In­ter Agency Task Force (IATF) and oth­ers.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with Supt Michael Sook­er, of the Mount­ed Branch and Ca­nine Unit, who said the of­fi­cers played a cru­cial role in crime sup­pres­sion.

Re­fer­ring to the re­cent seizure of 4.5 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na in Pin­to Road, Ari­ma, Sook­er said the po­lice were pre­pared to make full use of their re­sources to bet­ter se­cure com­mu­ni­ties.

“On a dai­ly ba­sis, we do go out with these di­vi­sions and sec­tions and we do get hefty finds, not on­ly drugs, arms and am­mu­ni­tion as well. We play a very im­por­tant role in crime-fight­ing...The Mount­ed Branch and Ca­nine Unit play a crit­i­cal role and we will con­tin­ue to do that. The team is very well mo­ti­vat­ed and the team is pre­pared to go ahead,” he said.

Sook­er said there were 38 dogs in the Ca­nine Unit, which spe­cialis­es in track­ing, gun and ex­plo­sive de­tec­tion, drug re­cov­ery and ca­dav­er re­cov­ery.

Sook­er said while in the past dogs were pur­chased from the US, a re­cent ini­tia­tive by the US Em­bassy led to the breed­ing of po­lice dogs lo­cal­ly.

Mys­tar said the unit would al­so be work­ing to source fresh hors­es, not­ing that some of the hors­es were ap­proach­ing 20 years old.

For her part, group cap­tain Kem­ba Han­nays, of the Air Guard, who al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pa­trol, said the De­fence Force and the po­lice had a long his­to­ry of part­ner­ship and were pleased to be part of the ini­tia­tive.

As of­fi­cers rode through down­town at a slow, ca­su­al pace, they met and spoke with pedes­tri­ans and mo­torists who took pho­tos of the of­fi­cers and the an­i­mals.—Re­port­ing by Shane Su­perville