MASSACHUSETTS -- For many police officers, despite modern technology and state of the art criminal justice practices, there are days when it feels like the old wild west out on the streets. For Holyoke Police Officer Anthony Ribeiro that sense came early Saturday morning.
While patrolling Winterberry Circle in west Holyoke at about 2:37 a.m., Ribeiro came upon a pair of horses wandering down the middle of the road.
There are probably few pages in the department's procedure manual dedicated to wrangling horses, but Sgt. Charles Monfett said, believe it or not, it happens often enough that an unwritten practice has been worked out by Holyoke officers.
"We don't have a lot of horses in Holyoke," he said, "so what we do is keep the animals in the area for a while to see if the owners find them missing and go looking for them."
After all, Monfett said, the department has no facilities to keep the horses, even if they could transport them.
Ribeiro followed the horses in his cruiser as they wandered about, and when help arrived, in the form of an Animal Control Officer, rounded up the animals to keep them contained. Police back at headquarters made phone calls to alert known area horse owners of the escape, but none claimed the animals.
Sure enough, Monfett said, at just after 6:30 a.m. a Rock Valley Road resident came along looking for his horses, missing from their corral not far from where Ribeiro found them.
(MassLive - Jan 19, 2014)
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