From Brig's photoshoot, a few days before he was killed.
It was only today that I sat down and opened the folder with all of his photos from that night. I had just grabbed the one "portrait" of him and never went back to it. I'll post a few more in the next little while. 



Someone sent me this piece:




Death of a horse shattering

Mar 6, 2006

A couple of years ago, when my younger brother Tim was training to be a part of the Metro Police Mounted Unit, I had an opportunity to go down to the stables and visit. It was quite wonderful. Wonderful to be around so many magnificent creatures and wonderful to see the change in my brother, to see him falling in love with horses.

I watched him grooming them and talking to them, stroking their velvety muzzles and affectionately patting their massive flanks and necks. I realized then how good this was for Tim. How good it would be for anyone. Animals, especially domesticated creatures, are precious gifts to humans. If we allow ourselves to be touched by them and connect with them, they reward us with life-changing riches.

My brother was then and is still a member of the ETF. The elite emergency task force. He is a sergeant and has the safety and care of many people as his responsibility. He daily faces situations and crises that I can barely write about from the safety of my home. So, it was with great joy that I watched him interacting with these gentle giants, saw the stress falling off of him, saw some of the armor dropping away. I know that, even though he has yet to officially join the mounted unit, but has stayed with the ETF where he is currently needed, the bond he created with those horses has never left him. He very often drops in to see them, to ride them, to talk to them, to re-connect.

And so it was that I felt my breath being coldly sucked away this past Saturday as I opened the paper to see the photo of several desperate officers draped over the body of a maimed and dying police horse, deliberately struck by a hit-and-run vehicle. The heartbreaking beauty of that photo has remained with me. It is the essence of love and nobility and sacrifice. Something told me to call Tim then and when he couldn't come to the phone I knew that what was just a terribly sad news story to me was a black hole for him.

The universe moves mountains sometimes to teach us hard lessons. That night, it had seen to it that Tim had been on duty and was called to the scene where his beloved Brigadier, his favourite, lay torn and bleeding on a cold, wet road.

He told me later, that as he approached the scene he only needed to see that golden tail to know who it was. He told me through a voice taut with emotion about the tears in the eyes of the other mounted officers there, of the gentleness and the tenderness with which they pled with Brigadier to lie still and of the horse's agonizing efforts to raise his once magnificent body to its feet.

And as the precious minutes passed and frantic radio calls were unable to bring a vet and any kind of relief, the universe pointed its unwavering finger and laid its enormous burden upon the weary shoulders of my brother and those other officers there who loved this animal so deeply. The call was made. The shotgun was loaded and my brother, my hero, stroked his friends muzzle and whispered to him one last time.

--- Neil Crone

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Death of a horse shattering
durhamregion.com - Mar 6, 2006