Policeman Will Sit Tall in Saddle Today

The rookie looked poised, even stiff, as he went through his final dress rehearsal before his first assignment. He seemed unamused and always under control as he marched by strangers to the sound of clicking cameras.

The real test for Lumpy will be today, at the Tet festival in Santa Ana’s Centennial Park, where he will be assigned to patrol duty. If everything goes well, he has a good chance of landing a full-time job with the Santa Ana Police Department.

Not that he needs one. Lumpy lives a comfortable life away from the spotlight in his Huntington Beach stable. He gets fed, cleaned and ridden every day. But today, Lumpy and his partner Nickie will become the first horses to wear the yellow and blue insignia of the Santa Ana Mounted Police Patrol.

While the Sheriff’s Department has used horses for years, Santa Ana is the first Orange County police department in recent history to deploy a mounted patrol.

The person who knows him best believes that Lumpy, a handsome white Belgian draft, can sense the importance of today’s occasion: “He’s very sensitive--no doubt that he picks up our anxiety and excitement,” said owner-rider Dan Felix, a Santa Ana police sergeant.

Felix is convinced that such horses as Lumpy, besides adding color to festive celebrations, are highly efficient crime preventers. Each trained patrol horse, said Felix, does the job of five foot patrol officers.

“You can’t see five officers in a crowd, but you can see a horse . . . (besides) horses can do their eight-hour shifts without getting tired. For an officer, that’s a lot of work.”

Felix got the idea of forming a mounted patrol about two years ago, almost immediately after his wife, Linda, paid $500 for Lumpy, then a sick 4-month-old colt.

“He was skinny, had big eyes, big bones and swollen knees, so I called him Lumpy, and the name stuck. We had to hand-feed him for more than a month, but he pulled through,” Felix said. The officer wore his uniform and proudly sported a black cowboy hat Friday as he rode Lumpy Western-style.

“He’s the giant pony we all dream of having as kids,” he said while leading Lumpy into a lazy trot.

Like the other six officers enlisted in Santa Ana’s part-time horse unit, Felix pays about $250 for the care and maintenance of his horse, which he considers more of a pet than a piece of equipment. “You can’t pet a truck or a jeep, but horses are just big lovable animals,” he said.

The patrol is still in its formative stage. Its members, who have been training for over a year, ride together every week. Felix said that if they get good reactions from the experimental patrols, he will ask the Police Department to create a permanent horse unit.

Santa Ana Police Chief Clyde L. Cronkhite is a believer already.

“I have used horses before during the (Los Angeles) Olympics, and they were very, very effective,” he said Friday. “I’d like to have a permanent unit, but we would need some community funding for that. It can get expensive. Besides the care and feeding, these horses need special training.”

The key to the police horse training, Felix said, is getting the animals accustomed to strange sounds and sights, such as gunshots, smoke and balloons.

None of this scares Lumpy, his owner said. “He likes humans even more than horses, and the only thing he reacts to is food.” Sure enough, the minute Lumpy set foot on the field for his practice ride, he reached down for a mouthful of grass. And then another. And another.

“My only concern for tomorrow is that the Park and Rec people will complain that he’s eating all the plants,” Felix said as he tried to pull Lumpy away from the bushes.

Minutes later, the team was back in the stable. Contrary to what one might expect from a dedicated owner, Felix did not reward Lumpy with a lump of sugar.

“I don’t like feeding him sweets,” said Felix, “because when he’s on the field, you don’t like to see him taking things from strangers.”

No one said that police work was without its sacrifices.

The beginning of the Vietnamese New Year will be celebrated today and Sunday at Santa Ana’s Centennial Park at 3000 W. Edinger Ave. Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. The annual Tet festival saluting the new lunar year is sponsored by the Union of Vietnamese Students Assn. of Southern California. The Vietnamese community will ring in its new year. Orange County Life, Page 10.