{"id":68028,"date":"2017-02-23T23:58:23","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T06:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-sheriff-prepares-for-mounted-patrol\/"},"modified":"2017-02-24T06:58:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-24T06:58:23","slug":"montezuma-county-sheriff-prepares-for-mounted-patrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-sheriff-prepares-for-mounted-patrol\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County sheriff prepares for mounted patrol"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The sheriff department has added a stable and soon will have the area fenced for horses that they will use for patrols.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

This spring, the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office will add two officers to its roster \u2013 officers with hooves.<\/p>\n

Sheriff Steve Nowlin announced his plan to start a mounted patrol program back in March of 2015, but only now does it appear close to fruition. This week the sheriff\u2019s office finished putting up a Cortez stable for the patrol horses, and Nowlin said he expects to pick up the first two animals by the middle of March. The horses, mustang geldings adopted from the Bureau of Land Management\u2019s wild horse and burro program, are scheduled to start training with four sheriff\u2019s deputies in April.<\/p>\n

After almost two years of planning, Nowlin said he\u2019s excited to finally put hooves on the ground in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed to have an avenue to bring people in the community closer to the officers of this agency,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd what better way to do that than to have this medium, the horse? Everybody\u2019s attracted to horses.\u201d<\/p>\n

His plan is to pick up two geldings from a BLM holding area in the second week of March. They haven\u2019t been chosen yet, but Nowlin said he will only consider animals that meet certain requirements: for example, they must be sorrels or bays between 14 and 16 hands high, and they must have the temperament to be around large groups of people without getting spooked. After the department picks out their ideal candidates, they\u2019ll be transported to the property of Ted Holland, a reserve officer with the sheriff\u2019s office who will be in charge of mounted patrol training.<\/p>\n

Nowlin hopes to hold a two-week intensive training course in April, and have the horses ready for regular patrols by early June. But he admitted \u201cthat might be pushing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the one outside the sheriff\u2019s office in Cortez, Dolores also has a stable and holding area for the horses, since the sheriff hopes to send them on patrol in both towns. Andrew Ghere, a patrol deputy in Dolores, will be one of the first people to train for the mounted patrol. He said he\u2019s excited because he believes a horse will help him do more friendly \u201ccommunity policing,\u201d his favorite part of the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be the cop everyone goes to when they have a problem,\u201d he said. \u201cI want people to know me and know I\u2019m approachable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghere hasn\u2019t been on a horse in about 15 years, he said, but that\u2019s not a problem to Nowlin. Since mounted patrol is so different from other kinds of riding, he said he\u2019d rather have deputies with scant riding experience so that they don\u2019t have to unlearn old habits.<\/p>\n

Although the horses will already be trained by BLM before they arrive in the county, Holland will give them additional training to help them adapt to the kind of terrain they\u2019ll patrol with the department. Nowlin said he even wants to give them scent training so they can help deputies track suspects or missing people.<\/p>\n

There were some \u201cquestion marks\u201d in his mind about using wild horses for the patrol, the sheriff said, but he believes the benefits will outweigh the risks. The department originally chose to get horses through the BLM program in order to save money, and in response to community input, Nowlin said. But he thinks mustangs have some genetic advantages as well, like their strong hooves, which won\u2019t need to be shod.<\/p>\n

He also wants horses that can adapt to a wide variety of terrain. Mounted deputies will patrol places that cars can\u2019t reach, including the uneven ground near Boggy Draw and other wilderness areas.<\/p>\n

Although he acknowledged there may still be some delays, depending on how long it takes deputies to train with the horses and other factors, Nowlin\u2019s goal is to have the mounted patrol program underway by summer. Although it will start out with just two horses, he hopes to add two more next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy expectations are not too high, but they\u2019re high,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we\u2019re going to have a really great program.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sheriff\u2019s department prepares for first patrol horses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,52,237],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-law-enforcement","tag-montezuma-county-government"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68028"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}