Thank You

Thank you for all of your support, emails, pledges, concern and passion for our efforts to keep San Diego’s Mounted Police Force intact. You never know what you’ve lost till it’s gone. It’s a sad day for all of San Diego.  And a sad day for the brave, highly trained officers and their wonderful horses. The landscape and fabric of this wonderful city has changed with this terrible loss. We appreciate all of you who saw what was happening and were willing to help and dare to dream that we all could get this done. We believe that if we had been given more notice and had a little more time we would be celebrating rather than being so heart-broken. We did what we could do. We never gave up. We appreciate and respect our law enforcement but believe they made a big mistake here. We all need to be more vigilant in keeping informed about the issues that are literally changing the history and majesty of our City. All of your comments, pledges and hard work are a tribute to the great work our Mounted Officers and their valiant horses gave to our Community. Special thanks to the networks and news organizations that made last ditch efforts to keep the public fully informed. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. Russ and Sharron Evans, Alissa R. King.

We will continue to keep the web site up and offer help to other Mounted organizations around the U.S. We have gained a wealth of knowledge and contacts and will commit our efforts to continuing to build this site and make our information available to other people and organizations that are working to keep their Mounted units intact.

Pledge Now! Tomorrow is the Day!

Tuesday, February 9:   The City of San Diego has told us that they will only talk to us about considering the suspension of the auction if we have the money for a one-year budget in our hand.  We don't know if we can get it by tomorrow, but here is our shot. Our objective is to STOP THE AUCTION and buy some time to form a partnership with the city to keep our Mounted Patrol.  No actual money will be sent right now, but please pledge only what you will send if we can get the auction halted. 

No contribution will be accepted if the auction is not stopped.  Any contribution, if the City stops the auction, would go directly into the City of San Diego's Partnership Fund, specially earmarked for use only to pay for the Mounted Patrol. Our family is pledging $5,000 and we have had some additional pledges as well. Any amount is welcome!  To pledge a financial contribution and HELP STOP THE AUCTION please write us directly at saveSDmountedpatrol@gmail.com 

THANK YOU for all of your support, comments and encouragement and I know that the Mounted Patrol team is deeply grateful for your appreciation of them.  Russ and Sharron Evans, Alissa and Jon King

Where Else?

Can you think of any other place on earth you could take a picture like this?

And please check out our new Tab about Balboa Park!

There is Hope!!

Hello devoted horse lovers and defenders of San Diego’s Mounted Police!

The San Diego City Mayors office has extended an offer to review a request to reevaluate the upcoming auction to dismantle and liquidate some of the horses and the infrastructure of this historic department and equine branch of the San Diego Police Department. They have agreed to look at a joint venture between private citizens and the police Department to keep the Mounted Police and its department intact during this critical time of budget cuts and fiscal repair to the City. With no promises made in a conversation with Ron Lacy, assistant to the Mayor, a door was open to take another look at the possibility of finding a way to keep the Department intact. It was made clear by Mr. Lacy that there was no way possible to do this, in light of the extreme budget issues the City is now facing.

The tentative proposal is for the community and other like minded partners to create an organization, (non profit or San Diego City Partners Foundation) that could fund the care for the horses and facilities. With new and recent annual budget costs this number would be in the approximate $100,000 dollar range down from the original $250,000. We have just a few days to raise actual moneys as a show of good faith before we meet with the Mayors office the first of next week. We are a grass roots group and on such short notice will be working round the clock to find people to pledge contributions to make this happen. If we can demonstrate that the community wants this and is willing to have actual moneys in hand before the auction we may be able to keep this Department intact. We are not asking for actual moneys now just a pledge to make our case in these final days. Once we have an acceptable agreement with the City we will need to have actual hard cash on or before Feb. 10^th.  All cash would be donated to the City of San Diego to their community partners fund and then specifically ear marked for the mounted police fund. It really is about cash.  It’s now or never. 

There will most likely be a need to sell some of the horses and equipment at the auction, which is an awful thing to consider, but we may be able to keep the department intact and viable as we find a way not to see the whole Department dissolved. Please review the info in our web page here as it will give you an oversight of the significance, investment value and importance of preserving and keeping this historic San Diego treasure.  You don’t have to be a horse lover to understand the importance of this powerful and dedicated organization and landmark to the safety and protection of our communities. Please consider pledging and help by emailing your thoughts and pledges.

Thanks. Russ Evans

What We Can Do RIGHT NOW

We believe the best way to stand together and raise our voices is RIGHT HERE.

If you support SUSPENDING THIS AUCTION IMMEDIATELY please leave a comment with your name and email address (and a few words of support if you would like!) by clicking on the word “comment” directly below these words. 

Thank you for coming!

Well we've got the website up and working although we will continue to add information as we receive it.  Seeing the horses today was so phenomenal, and trying to keep them together as a unit and representing and protecting San Diego seems very important to us and others we have talked to.  So many cities are disbanding their mounted patrols, right at a time when there are many studies being published showing their extreme value both in law enforcement and in representing a non-threatening police presence.  San Diego happens to have one of the PREMIER units, small in number but specially chosen and trained and matched.  In fact, our city's budget for the mounted patrol was one of the least expensive we could find in our research.  I think that the patrol and its history could become another living symbol of San Diego to folks.  Please feel free to pass this along, I also think you'll like clicking on the tabs that show more of it's history and some of the other info. 

More to follow, and thanks again!

What is it really worth?

It has taken many long years, extreme dedication and a LARGE amount of taxpayer money to assemble this world-class mounted patrol unit.  We as local citizens have equity in this team that both represents us and protects us.  It has been estimated by other cities wanting to have a mounted patrol that it would cost 2 million dollars to achieve what we already have.  San Diego's purchase of specially bred horses, some from as far as Canada, and the years of extensive training to do what they do so well cannot be recouped through a hasty auction.  We need to preserve this amazing asset of our City!