It’s become a common sight over the past few months: Joker, Jackpot, Kaiser, King, Emmitt and their fellow four-legged companions towering majestically over cars, cyclists and pedestrians. In double file they strut through downtown Atlanta’s congested streets, seemingly unfazed by the city’s notorious traffic and oppressive heat.
Police on horseback are “an attractive nuisance,” said a smiling Lt. Greg Lyon, the commander of the mounted patrol unit at the Atlanta Police Department.
Riding their horses through the densest urban areas at the busiest times of the day is part of how Atlanta Police — and other large law enforcement agencies across the country — are preparing for the FIFA World Cup that kicks off June 11. Much of the training, especially for crowd management, is taken from the European playbook.
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Preparing for unprecedented security demands
The global men’s soccer tournament, expected to be one of the largest sporting events in history, will span more than five weeks and spread across 16 cities in three countries: the United States, Canada and Mexico. Atlanta will host eight World Cup matches — second only to Dallas — including one of the semifinals.
The World Cup brings unprecedented and highly complex public safety, emergency management and national security challenges. Federal, state and local law enforcement are tasked with securing not just the main event location — the stadium — but an entire event ecosystem, from transit corridors to team hotels to fan zones.
Atlanta, along with police departments across the country, started preparations for the World Cup at least two years ago. Over the past few months, Lyon’s mounted unit has ramped up frequency and intensity of its training from weekly to daily, often integrating with the department’s public disorder team.
“We want to make sure we are ready to handle all these passionate fans,” Lyon said, including those who in European football culture are known as hooligans, violent soccer fans.
Atlanta Police’s mounted unit is part of the special operations section, which also oversees the agency’s SWAT team, as well as the helicopter and motorcycle units.
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Why mounted units remain a force multiplier
Atlanta is one of only three law enforcement agencies in Georgia with a fully operational mounted patrol unit. It’s made up of 13 police horses and 12 full-time mounted officers. The stables and training facilities are located in the state-of-the-art Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, which opened in April 2025.
On a recent morning — the sun sitting high and heavy over the stables, the sandy riding ring and obstacle course — Lyon is getting his horse, a 16-year-old Tennessee Walker named Drifter, ready for a training round.
For the World Cup and other major events, Atlanta Police work closely with the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office in the northern Atlanta suburbs, which has a mounted unit consisting of seven horses and nine deputies.
During the World Cup, five of Cobb’s horses will be stationed at Atlanta’s stables. For the bigger matches and fan festivals, police departments in Savannah and Memphis will send additional horses to Atlanta, bringing the total number up to almost thirty.
“Talk about force multipliers,” said Lyon, who’s led the mounted unit since 2017. “On the big games days, we’ll have a lot of ponies on the street,” as he affectionately calls the tall and strong animals.
When community engagement meets crowd control
Mounted patrol supports three main missions: Community, crime and crowd control, “with community being number one,” Lyon said.
Police horses often support public events like parades, school outreach programs or recruiting fairs, said Lt. Col. Tim Brown, Special Operations Division Commander for the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office. They also assist in the search for missing persons. Sitting at an impressive height of at least 10 feet, mounted officers display authority, which can have a positive effect on crime prevention.
Also, “horses are known to have a calming effect on people, and their presence helps when things get heated,” said Brown, a 38-year law enforcement veteran. “They truly are a de-escalation force.”
Lyon sees it all the time, especially while patrolling neighborhoods that might not be friendly to police. “People who would never approach an officer in a patrol car do come over to pet the horse,” he said.
The calming effect also extends to large crowds, Lyon added, noting that mounted units can completely shift a crowd’s demeanor. In crowd management, mounted officers have a better vantage point and greater visibility than officers on foot.
“We can identify a problem early and take action,” he said — whether the problem is a fight or a medical emergency.
In certain situations, horses even outperform sophisticated surveillance technology like UAVs. While drones can spot issues from the air, they can’t immediately get involved like mounted officers can, and they can’t physically push a dense crowd.
“But when the horses are coming through, the crowd parts,” Lyon noted.
How European tactics are shaping U.S. mounted patrol training
Mounted patrol has been around for centuries and has played a critical role in the early days of policing. The French Maréchaussée, for example, a mounted military police corps and predecessor of the Gendarmerie, used to patrol rural areas and country roads. The British Bow Street Horse Patrol, founded in 1763, is known as the oldest uniformed police force in the world. It was incorporated into the Greater London’s Metropolitan Police in 1836.
To this day, European mounted police units tend to be larger and are being deployed more regularly than their counterparts in the U.S. They are typically part of a standing riot police force that deals with public disorder, from rowdy soccer fans to mass demonstrations.
For example, the Metropolitan Police in London currently have around 110 horses, while the largest mounted unit in the U.S. — the New York City Police Department — has 50 to 60 horses.
At the police precinct in Munich, Germany, which falls under the command of Bavarian state police, the mounted unit includes 38 horses and an equal number of full-time riders.
In addition to community engagement, crime prevention and search-and-rescue efforts, mounted officers in Munich are also deployed during large-scale demonstrations and matches involving FC Bayern Munich, the local football club and one of the world’s soccer powerhouses.
On match days, mounted officers secure fan marches from and to Allianz Arena, the team’s home stadium, patrol the stadium perimeter and separate potentially violent groups of opposing fans, particularly those who are already known to police, said Polizeihauptkommissarin (a mid-level supervisory rank) Bettina Reger, who serves as deputy commander of the department’s mounted unit.
In Germany and the UK, as in other European countries, mounted police are also used as turnstiles during soccer matches, managing the crowd as it flows in to and out of the stadium.
Further, mounted units can boost operational efficiency. “Because of their height and mass, a single horse can replace several officers on foot, helping save resources on the ground,” Reger noted.
Over the past two years, command staff from Atlanta Police and other U.S. law enforcement agencies have traveled to Europe — mainly the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands — to familiarize themselves with training approaches, tactics and operational details of police forces that have extensive experience with global soccer culture.
At home, the Atlanta Police Department works closely with Utah-based Survival Edge Tactical Systems, a training consultancy with a focus on public order training. Many of the instructors are active or former officers from London’s Metropolitan Police and other European police forces.
For the most part, Atlanta’s Lyon said, mounted units around the world speak a similar language, though there are some differences in focus.
Preparing horses for chaos and sensory overload
Brown, with suburban Cobb County, said his department has particularly benefited from European approaches to crowd control and formation riding. “Because of our location, we don’t deal with this on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
A big part of preparing the horses to operate in large, sometimes unruly, crowds is what’s called bombproofing or desensitizing.
The Cobb County Sheriff’s Office, which has a mounted unit consisting of seven horses, has teamed up with Atlanta police for crowd management training prior to the World Cup, often integrating with the agencies’ public disorder units.
Photo/Cobb County Sheriff’s Office
A special focus of the joint training between Atlanta Police and the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office is on desensitizing, or “bomb-proofing” — helping horses adapt to the sensory overload of passionate crowds, both at day and night. Instructors use smoke machines, loudspeakers, sirens, live fire and firecrackers to prepare the animals for high-pressure environments.
Photo/Cobb County Sheriff’s Office
Photo/Cobb County Sheriff’s Office
“As herd animals, horses have a natural flight instinct,” said Reger from Munich police. To prepare them for the sensory overkill by crowds with drums, bullhorns and fireworks, instructors create an environment where horses are trained to stay calm despite multiple distractions. Trainers use positive reinforcement methods consisting of repetition and rewards.
In Atlanta, Lyon’s team has set up an obstacle course where officers use different acoustic and haptic stimuli during training: smoke machines, inflatable tubes, loudspeakers, sirens, firecrackers, kazoos, as well as shooting blanks from the saddle and waving flags near the horses’ eyes — until the animals don’t bolt nor blink.
While horses are tough animals and trained to stay calm in the middle of a heated crowd, there is a red line, Lyon said. When people are starting to throw projectiles, and violence erupts against the police, “I’m pulling the horses back. I’m not taking the risk of them getting hurt,” he added.
WATCH: A special focus of the joint training between Atlanta Police and the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office is on desensitizing, or “bomb-proofing” — helping horses adapt to the sensory overload of crowds, both day and night.
Embedded vets, mobile support and field logistics
It’s not only in training protocols and tactical approaches that U.S. mounted units have adopted ideas from their European counterparts. Departments like Atlanta are also looking to incorporate smaller, practical tips from overseas.
During deployment, Atlanta police usually have a veterinarian on call in case a horse gets injured or has a medical emergency. During high-stakes events, Lyon’s unit also sets up trailers with gallons of water, stacks of hay and electrolyte syringes, so horses can take a break from the action.
Following conversations with a British instructor, Lyon decided that on World Cup match days to have a vet embedded with the unit in the field. “If something happens while we’re out patrolling, the horse can immediately be treated,” he said.
While preparing for worst case scenarios, Lyon expects the FIFA World Cup to remain largely peaceful, allowing Atlanta’s mounted patrol to focus on their core mission. “We want to be good ambassadors for the city,” he said.
Cobb County’s Brown is convinced that the intensified training with Atlanta police and some of the European-inspired approaches to crowd management will pay off long after visitors from around the world have left the city and the country.
“With all the work we put in getting ready for this event, we’ve set new benchmarks,” he said. “And we plan to incorporate those in our regular training and future operations.”
