NSW mounted police

Article

8 Apr

The NSW Mounted Police Unit, also known as the “Mounties” is a small unit of the NSW Police Force, focused on crowd control and ceremonial duties.

Organisation

The NSW Police Force website states that the Mounted Police Unit deals with:

Public order management events by undertaking crowd control and traffic management
High visibility patrols
Local operations targeting crime
Searches covering rough terrains (1).

They also play a ceremonial role in parades, and feature heavily in police propaganda targeted at children (2, 3).

The Mounted Police Unit consists of 30-35 police officers, 9 grooms and one stable coordinator (4, 5).

They have access to 30 horses, generally coloured bay, brown and black following military tradition. Horses must be 16 hands (162.56 cm) tall or above (6).

The unit is based at 7 Baptist St, Redfern, with stables, a training area and museum.

Officers generally patrol in pairs, with larger groups deployed to crowd control situations to support the Public Order and Riot Squad.

The horses have equipment for different situations, including eye guards for crowd control, and reflective covers for night-time visibility.

History

Horses have been used by militaries throughout history for their speed and ability to maim and terrify victims. Police horses have a history of trampling victims, especially at demonstrations.

In 1822-24, the Wiradjuri people fought a series of skirmishes with armed settlers and British military forces encroaching on Wiradjuri land near Bathurst. Hundreds of Wiradjuri people were massacred, including non-combatants who were poisoned by settlers. Fearing Wiradjuri reprisals and aiming to rein in settlers who had turned to bushranging, in 1825 New South Wales Governor Brisbane authorised the creation of the “horse patrol” which would later be redubbed the Mounted Police (7). Initially a military unit, the founding of the Mounted Police predates the founding of the broader NSW Police Force in 1862 (8).

The NSW Mounted Police claim to be the oldest continuously operating mounted police unit in the world (9).

The mounted police were tasked with combating Aboriginal people, capturing escaped convicts and bushrangers. They were based on the colony’s frontier, initially in Bathurst and later adding divisions in Wallis Plains (now Maitland) and Goulburn with a headquarters in Sydney.

The Maitland division under Lieutenant Nathaniel Lowe conducted a terror campaign against the local Aboriginal population, ordering the murder of several prominent Wonnarua people in custody. Lowe was tried for the murder of one Wonnarua man “Jacky Jacky”, but was acquitted by a jury of British military men (10).

Beginning in 1838, the Mounted Police waged a campaign against the Gamilaraay People, including the Waterloo Creek Massacre (also known as the Slaughterhouse Creek Massacre). There were conflicting reports from police officers of the number of casualties, with Sergeant John Lee testifying “From what I saw myself, I should say that from forty to fifty blacks were killed” (11).

In 1850, the original Mounted Police Unit was disbanded and amalgamated with other colonial police forces, before being reformed as a unit of the NSW Police Force in 1862. During this period, the repression of Aboriginal resistance was largely taken over by the Native Police.

In 1989, right wing member of the NSW Legislative Council Fred Nile led a march through Oxford Street and Kings Cross (Sydney’s gay nightlife district) protesting homosexuality. His march was met with a larger contingent of gay rights campaigners, who were subsequently attacked by the Mounted Unit (12).

In 1990, NSW Minister for Police and Emergency Services Ted Pickering responded to the previous year’s incident and told parliament that police horses would no longer be used for crowd control (13). However, in subsequent years the Mounted Unit has continued to be deployed against protesters.

In 2002, police repeatedly charged their horses into the crowd at a May Day protest in Sydney, causing several injuries including one officer who was trampled by a horse, and another officer from the Mounted Unit who fell. Police claimed that a protester threw marbles on the ground to cause the horses to fall (14).

In November 2002, the Mounted Police charged a crowd of protesters at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Sydney. Journalist Patricia Karvelas from the Australian was trampled by two police horses and hospitalised with head and abdominal injuries (15).

In 2021 two protesters were accused of punching a police horse at a protest against covid lockdowns in Sydney. Charges of animal cruelty were eventually dropped, with one protester convicted of breaching public health orders (16, 17).