{"id":206711,"date":"2026-04-23T00:30:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T00:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/206711\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T00:30:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T00:30:35","slug":"an-arrest-in-the-streets-of-new-york-on-horseback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/206711\/","title":{"rendered":"An Arrest in the Streets of New York, on Horseback"},"content":{"rendered":"

Officers in the Police Department\u2019s Mounted Unit do not often make arrests. But on Wednesday, one of the unit\u2019s officers rode his horse through the streets of Manhattan in pursuit of a woman accused of stealing a purse.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop running!\u201d the officer, who was riding a horse named Kelly, shouted at the woman, according to video of the episode posted to social media<\/a> on Thursday by the Police Department. \u201cStop running!\u201d<\/p>\n

But she did not stop running. The woman, later identified as Felicia Field, 44, led the officer and his horse under sidewalk scaffolding sheds and between parked cars until a bystander \u2014 who was not riding a horse \u2014 intercepted her.<\/p>\n

The Police Department said she was apprehended \u201cwith the help of a witness.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a criminal complaint, Ms. Field was accused of stealing a purse from the lap of an older woman nearby. She was charged with larceny and providing false information to a police officer in an effort to conceal her identity, according to a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for New York County Defender Services, which is representing Ms. Field, declined to comment.<\/p>\n

After her arrest, the authorities discovered that Ms. Field was convicted in 2001 of second-degree murder<\/a> in connection with the killing of a livery cabdriver whom she had attempted to rob with a group of friends.<\/p>\n

She received a sentence of 25 years to life for that crime and was later released; the circumstances of her release were not clear on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

A police spokesman said officers on horseback are typically deployed for crowd control or to observe the scene in places like Times Square.<\/p>\n

The arrest on Wednesday was captured by the body camera of the officer, whom the department did not identify. That video shows the horse\u2019s head bobbing up and down as it gallops around West 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue with the officer on its back, yelling loudly.<\/p>\n

Video of the episode was also captured by a news crew from the local NBC affiliate<\/a>, which the station said was in the area for a separate story.<\/p>\n

In the NBC footage, the woman can be heard denying that she stole anything. An unseen bystander can also be heard berating the officer for making the horse run in the street.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to hurt somebody! You\u2019re going to hurt this horse! What is wrong with you?\u201d the bystander yells. \u201cStop! Get out of the street!\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officers in the Police Department\u2019s Mounted Unit do not often make arrests. But on Wednesday, one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9058,11634,9,24,55,54,56,104,8219,6672,9057],"class_list":{"0":"post-206711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-downloads-and-streaming","9":"tag-horses","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-city-news","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-police","16":"tag-robberies-and-thefts","17":"tag-upper-west-side-manhattan","18":"tag-video-recordings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}