kontextmaschine:

Honestly, Portland disbanded its mounted police team a few years ago because they were really ceremonial/reward duty (and the PPB has never been made whole from late-2000s cuts let alone kept up with growth, though there’s a drive to correct that now). I remember as a kid Philly, which still had institutional memory of ‘60s riots, used them pretty well for (potentially hostile) crowd control, maybe they’ll get brought back for that.

Part of it is untrained or -led infantry will basically always break in the face of a mounted charge even though police horses aren’t trained to trample so if the crowds stood their ground they’d balk