The NYPD Mounted Unit is a specialized unit of the New York City Police Department that is primarily responsible for patrolling the streets of Manhattan. Other duties for the unit include crowd control at large events, high visibility policing roles and picturesque or ceremonial purposes. The NYPD Mount Unit is the largest mount police force in all of the United States, made of upwards of fifty steads. Over eight million dollars are spent operating the mounted unit every year.
History with the Macy's Parade[]
The NYPD Mounted Unit made its Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade debut in the very first procession, which was then known as the Macy's Christmas Parade. The march kicked off at 9 a.m. sharp on Thanksgiving Day 1924 and was led down its more than six-mile-long Parade route by none other than New York's finest, the NYPD Mounted Unit. The police force also used horses that same year as crowd control, making sure spectators stayed in line from Harlem all the way down to Macy's flagship 34th Street department store.
The Mounted Unit continued to lead the Parade route to Herald Square for several decades, becoming an integral part of the Macy's Parade's fabric. Beginning with the 1985 Parade, the escorting duties were handed over to another NYPD unit, the NYPD Highway Patrol Motorcycle Unit, an honor the unit still has to this day. The mounted unit was moved to a later point in the Parade's line of march, where they would continue to make several more decades worth of appearances.
The NYPD Mounted Unit did not appear in the reimagined 2020 Parade, as the COVID-19 pandemic caused the Parade's workforce to be slashed by over 88% (the reduction had originally been at 60%, and later 75%, and finally 88% as a result of rising cases in late-November 2020.) The unit would eventually return in 2021, where it still appears to this day.