After years in a stable under an overpass, Richmond’s police horses could get a new home

Look over the edge of the overpass where Chamberlayne Avenue becomes Belvidere, and you might see an unexpected sight: horses ambling among the concrete piers. 

Today those horses are rescues from other counties being kept temporarily by Richmond Animal Care and Control. But for 50 years, the stable and yard on Brook Rd. next to an active train track and a scrap metal facility were the primary residence of the equine members of the Richmond Police Department’s Mounted Unit. 

As conditions deteriorated, RPD moved its horses to greener pastures at Historic Tuckahoe, a former plantation that straddles the Henrico-Goochland county line. Still, the department has continued to hope it might bring the animals back to Richmond, so that they might live in the same place where they work. 

“Our goal is to have this center inside the city,” Deputy Chief Sydney Collier said last week as he presented a new plan to build a police equestrian facility just north of Gillies Creek Park in Richmond’s East End. 

If the proposal moves forward — a step that will depend on whether the money can be raised to pay for it  — the roughly 7 acre, city-owned site at 3910 Crestview Rd. will be transformed from a mostly forested parcel into large expanses of pasture, a barn with an indoor arena and eight stalls, a two-level office building and an outdoor training ring. 

Capt. Anthony Jackson told The Richmonder that RPD believes the new facility could play a far greater role in the city than the awkward parcel off Brook Road, which is difficult for school buses and other visitors to access. 

“It could become a pillar of the community,” he said, floating the possibility of renting out space for equine therapy and bringing more students and community members onto the site. 

Money, however, has always been the sticking point when it comes to a new home for the mounted unit. As budgets have become strained and the role of the mounted unit has moved almost exclusively toward community engagement, critics have argued it makes more financial sense to get rid of the squad. Richmond has declined to take that step so far, but the monetary backing it’s offered for a new stable is limited. The city’s capital improvements budget currently has just over $500,000 for the project, and Jackson said “there are no indicators the city is going to give us any more.” 

“If this project is going to go forward, it’s going to be privately funded,” he said. 

A nonprofit, the Friends of the Richmond Mounted Squad, is spearheading those efforts. But even that may be difficult: group President Leslie Buck said that since 2018, when the Crestview site was first considered, the estimated cost has risen to $6 to $8 million.

“The price tag on this has gone higher every time we attempt to do anything with it,” she said. 

Still, after more than 20 years of trying to relocate the mounted unit, “the Friends really want to see this through,” she continued. “We want it for the city. We want it for the community. We want it for the horses. We want it for the officers.” 

A community focus

Richmond’s mounted unit is one of the oldest in the country, dating back to about 1894. Over the years it’s been headquartered in various places, including the Brook Road facility, where it moved in 1971. 

As that facility aged, the unit shrank. Once composed of more than a dozen horses and riders, its ranks now comprise three horses — Aslan, Toby and Banjo — along with Sgt. Anthony Paciello and Mounted Officer Holly Donovan. 

Despite the dwindling numbers, Jackson insists the unit is “still such a valuable asset to this department.” 

While in the past, police on horses did crowd control and even wrote tickets, today mounted officers primarily focus on community engagement as they patrol. Paciello said that in his experience, people who otherwise want little to do with police will approach an officer on a horse.

“It’s just that barrier breakdown of being approachable,” he said. When someone comes up to the animal, “their whole demeanor changes. We get a lot of, 'I’m glad I ran into you guys today.'” 

Those positive interactions can help forge better police-community relationships, he and Jackson say. As an example, they point to the predominantly Latino Southwood community off Hull Street, where the mounted unit has had success in developing ties among residents otherwise wary of police — connections that may be especially valuable following a rise in anti-police sentiment in 2020 and amid a nationwide immigration crackdown. (At a crime briefing this summer, RPD Chief Rick Edwards said 911 calls from Southwood had dropped 34%.) 

“This unit’s not going to bring statistics to the table. It’s not going to bring arrests or traffic tickets,” said Jackson. “But this unit still has a large value to the community.” 

Buck called the mounted officers “ambassadors for the city.” 

“You watch the interaction with children, with adults, with individuals who have never been in contact with a horse and who don’t have much desire to be in contact with the police, to be frank,” she said. “You just have to see the interaction one time and then you know.”

‘The furthest we’ve ever gotten’

Until 2020, when Richmond police moved them to Tuckahoe, the horses didn’t have much of a place to put their feet up at the end of the workday. 

Besides having little pastureland, the yard’s location under the Chamberlayne overpass had become hazardous for the animals. People threw trash off the bridge and even, on one occasion, a scooter. Motor oil washed off during rainstorms. Sometimes pieces of concrete from the structure dislodged and risked hitting the horses. 

“For the health and the overall safety of the horses, this was not the place to be,” said Jackson.

By then, officials had long known the Brook Road site was subpar. In 2001, City Council passed a resolution declaring that it was “outdated” and the land had “reached its useful life for a horse stable.” 

Finding an alternative has been tricky. Bryan Park was considered on several occasions but was scrapped over deed restrictions and neighbor objections. Other sites were rejected over environmental concerns. 

“Everywhere we went, we tested the soil and they found something in the soil in which we could not put the horses,” Collier told the Urban Design Committee at its Sept. 11 meeting. 

The Crestview Road site was chosen in 2018, and the wheels to build a new facility were put in motion. But they were abruptly halted the following year when construction bids came back at over $1 million more than the $1.5 million budget. The project was canceled. 

The latest push, said Buck, “is the furthest we’ve ever gotten.” Moseley Architects has drawn up building plans, while Timmons Group has conducted site design. 

The Urban Design Committee has already asked for some additional work on the plans, including another round of canvassing the neighbors, which hasn’t been done since 2018. They’ve also raised questions about the trees that will have to be cut down for the pastureland and what kind of signage the department would use for the site. 

Money, though, is likely to continue to be the biggest hurdle. The Friends are a small group not well equipped to raise millions, said Buck — and they’ll take all the help they can get. 

“I need large corporate donors that want their name on this project. If you want it to be the Altria Equestrian Center, write me a check. If you want it to be the Dominion Training Ring, write me a check,” she said. “I can’t get it from horse ladies who have big farms. I wish I could.”

Contact Reporter Sarah Vogelsong at svogelsong@richmonder.org