The Horse Force

Tucked away in a stable in lower Manhattan, Officer Chris Daniello is getting Major ready for work. As CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports, Major and his colleagues are being trotted out as a solution for some budget-strapped, image-challenged police departments.

It would be easy to look at Daniello and dismiss him as a quaint holdover from a simpler time. But New York's thoroughly modern police commissioner has rediscovered horses — less so because they're lovable than because they're affordable.

"They're not that expensive to maintain, $10 a day for hay and some treatment," explains Commissioner Ray Kelly.

And the horses' emissions are easier on the atmosphere than their gasoline-powered competitors.

The NYPD already has 80 horses who hit the streets thousands of times a year to control crowds and crime and traffic. They are hard to ignore. According to Kelly, "We're moving them into areas now where they can be more effective in deterring crime."

And it works.

"I approach a crowd on this [horse] and tell them to move back, everyone's like, 'Yes Sir,'" Daniello says. The horses have worked out so well that the department is buying 75 more.

NYPD horses have to do things no civilian horse with any sense would do. Horses that might have been raised in quiet country pastures have to prove they can deal with the noise in the street and New Yorkers in their faces.

Lt. David Gaynor trains the horses and their riders, using things like fake gunfire and make-believe demonstrators. It isn't easy: Four out of five horses that start the training wash out. Which makes horses like Apple and Roy among the most elite members of the NYPD. Good for crime control, good for public relations and good for their own kind.

"It kind of pays homage to the horse," Gaynor says. "It shows that there's still a place for horses in the modern city."