“When the hours were long you could talk to a horse, and you can’t do that with a motorcycle.”
-FORMER MOUNTED POLICE OFFICER AUGUST MISHKE, QUOTED IN THE TRIBUNE IN 1951
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You would have thought the Loop was losing Marshall Field’s or something. When the Chicago Police Department announced that it was eliminating the downtown mounted unit, the public reared up in protest. But practicality won out over sentimentality, and 41 horses went on the auction block. Dineen successfully bid $25 for his 20-year mount, who was promised “a good home for life on the Tribune farm near Wheaton [Cantigny],” and Dineen could visit whenever he wished. (So that’s where our parents got that line when they took away our dog.) The mounted unit was reinstated in 1974 to patrol parks and the lakefront; still no sign of Field’s returning.
* Number of horses in the mounted unit at its peak in the 1920s: 160. Number of horses today: 32.
* Number of Chicago mounted police who rode across the Civic Opera House stage in a 1940 production of “Carmen”: 19.
* Mode of transportation used by a Chicago officer to chase down and arrest a shooting suspect last year: a Segway.
Sources: Tribune archives, Chicago Police Department.
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nwatkins@tribune.com
