By MARCUS FRANKLIN
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK- These are uncertain times for J.J., Donny, Maverick and the rest of their stablemates in a Manhattan barn.
The 25 horses in Troop B of the New York City Police Department’s Mounted Unit stay on the ground floor of a structure along the West Side Highway at West 23rd Street, but officials who want to build a park in the neighborhood are planning to evict the animals.
Police officials say they don’t want to lose the location, which serves as the Mounted Unit’s headquarters. Of the unit’s five barns, only the West Side Highway site is enclosed, allowing year-round training.
It is relatively close to Times Square, the Port Authority, Penn Station, the Empire State Building and other landmarks that the unit patrols, said Inspector Harold Kohlmann, commanding officer of the Mounted Unit.
“If we lost here we’d lose all our winter training and with that comes injuries to horses and officers,” he said.
But Daniel L. Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development and city rebuilding, said: “As soon as we can find an alternate location for the horses we want to get them out of there as quick as possible.” He is vice chairman of the board of directors of the Hudson River Park Trust, a city-state partnership created in 1998 to design, build and maintain the park.
The park is part of a plan to tranform a five-mile (eight-kilometer) stretch of the West Side into Hudson River Park. The planned 550-acre (220-hectare) park is touted as the largest open space development in New York City since Central Park.
The only other police horse barn in Manhattan, near the Holland Tunnel, is full, Kohlmann said. The others are in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn.
There are two things keeping the horses, hay and manure along the Manhattan shoreline from being replaced by lush lawns, carousels, gardens and esplanades: the lack of a new home for the unit.
Construction could begin as early as this year, according to the Web site of the Hudson River Park Trust.
There is nothing anachronistic about police officers on horseback, Kohlmann said. They allow officers sitting 9 feet (2.7 meters) above ground a bird’s eye view, helping to deter crime, while providing great public relations for the NYPD.
The mounted unit was established in 1871 and peaked at 800 officers and 400 horses in subsequent decades, Kohlmann said.
Today the unit numbers about 100 police officers and 67 horses, a reduction that first began with the invention of the automobile.