Hoofed Guardians of the Parks and Their Riders: a Volunteer Affair

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After a dinner at Tavern on the Green last month, President Clinton drew a crowd as he started taking questions. When he finished, he and his Secret Service agents piled into a black SUV and the Parks Auxiliary Mounted Unit was called in to disperse the onlookers.


Sitting astride their 6-foot-tall Clydesdales, volunteer Todd Strier and his accompanying parks police officer had little trouble dispersing the group so the former president could leave.


Seven days a week, 365 days a year, members of a group of 60 volunteers don green uniforms and saddle up for patrols in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, Clove Lake Park in Staten Island, and Central Park.


The volunteers are unarmed – except for their radios – and have no power to issue summonses. They do receive considerable radio training, enabling them to become the Parks Department’s “eyes and ears,” Mr. Strier said. The parks officers with whom they sometimes ride don’t carry guns, only batons and handcuffs. For their own safety, members of the Mounted Unit are not allowed off their horses, except to aid an injured person. That’s no problem, according to the founder and president of the auxiliary patrol, John Entwistle. “People listen when you’re on top of an 1,800-pound animal,” he said.


In exchange for the 5,000 to 6,000 hours a year that the unit gives to the city, the Parks Department provides horses and equipment. The unit takes care of all of its other expenses – notably, for training – through fund raising. Its first annual gala is scheduled for September 29.


The Police Department had a volunteer mounted patrol in the first half of the 20th century that functioned, as Mr. Entwistle put it, “as a very social activity.” He re-established the patrol in 1996, with the assistance of the then-commissioner of parks, Henry Stern.


Most of the time, the riders are telling dog owners to leash their animals, or giving directions to tourists. On patrol in Central Park, a volunteer once had to tell a bewildered pair they were walking the wrong way for the Statue of Liberty – and were miles off course.


“On a Saturday or Sunday on a nice day, it resembles a Fellini movie – the humanity, the diversity of it,” Mr. Entwistle said.


The Parks Department shares six of its 15 horses with the volunteers: Monte and Blackjack, Ben and Jerry, and Doc and Jock.


The volunteers must obtain their riding skills on their own.


Mr. Entwistle has ridden since his youth in Princeton, N.J., but Florence Gordon, a legal secretary during the workday, learned to ride entirely on a whim.


“I was in a cab and we stopped at a light in front of the Claremont Stables, and I decided to learn to ride right there,” she said.


The unit keeps its Central Park horses at the 125-year-old stable on West 89th Street, and Ms. Gordon learned of the program during her lessons.


During the week, the volunteers do evening patrols with parks officers.


“It’s kind of like being a parent,” said one of the officers, Corporal Laurie Trocolo. “I help train them, I get to see them get better. It feels really good.”


She learned to ride as a child in Dutchess County, where she and friends would leap fences at neighboring horse farms and ride bareback. A good day was one where a horse “took off like a bat outa hell.” Her mother’s fear for the girl’s safety led her to take riding lessons in exchange for working at a local stable.


Another volunteer, Meg Herrman, an executive at Merrill Lynch, has a fond memory of rescuing a pit bull left tied to a tree in Van Cortlandt Park, but mostly she likes exploring the park and dealing with tourists.


“I’ve never been in more photographs or videos then when I’m on this horse,” she said.


Ms. Herrman likes to imagine that she’s in “some photo albums in Japan, because I was on patrol.”


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