The Sound Of Hooves On Pavement: NYC’s Mounted Police And The City’s Rare Moments Of Grace

Source: The Empire City Wire

What Is NYPD’s Mounted Unit?

In a city saturated with glowing screens, corporate lanyards, and the dull rhythm of rubber soles on concrete, there's something unexpectedly refreshing about hearing horse hooves echo down a side street. You look up from your phone, and for a split second, you're not in a rush. You're watching a horse—several, maybe—glide through Midtown traffic or trot past Washington Square Park. The scene is strange, almost cinematic. And it’s real. That’s the NYPD’s Mounted Unit.

Sometimes called “10-foot cops,” the mounted police are part of the NYPD’s Special Operations Bureau and make up one of the largest mounted units in the United States. While their job is serious—crowd control at protests, concerts, parades, and major sporting events—they also bring something intangible to the city: a rare, grounding presence. In a metropolis defined by speed and vertical ambition, these horses slow everything down. They remind you that you're standing on ground, not just in an office tower or on the grid.

They’ve Been Around For 150+ Years

The presence of horses in New York City, whether pulling carriages through Central Park or patrolling the streets with the NYPD’s Mounted Unit, has been debated for some time. Supporters see them as a nostalgic symbol of the city’s history or a practical tool for crowd control and community policing. But critics argue that keeping horses in such a dense, noisy, and often unforgiving urban environment is outdated and inhumane. Having horses in the city isn’t necessarily a bad thing—they serve as a powerful reminder that we still share our environment with other animals, and just as New York has evolved to accommodate bikers, future urban planning could potentially find thoughtful ways to make city life safer and more accommodating for horses too.

The Mounted Unit has been around since 1858, first established to enforce traffic laws back when most of the city was horsepower. Now, they’re deployed across four boroughs—Staten Island excluded—not just as a deterrent to crime, but as a living, breathing break from the mechanical. In a place obsessed with the future, the mounted unit quietly preserves a piece of the past.

What’s beautiful is how jarring it feels. You’re walking out of a WeWork, maybe trying to remember your Slack password, and then—hooves. You hear them before you see them, clacking against the pavement like punctuation in a sentence you didn’t know was being written. And when you do see them—towering above traffic, calm amid chaos—you remember, for a moment, that not everything in New York moves at the speed of Wi-Fi.