This had me laughing out loud...

‘Gay’ police horse saga finally over

By Hannah Piper

The Balliol graduate who made the national press after calling a police horse “gay” will no longer face prosecution, it emerged last Thursday. Sam Brown, who graduated in English Literature last summer, spent a night in the cells and was fined £80 in May after a drunken conversation with two mounted policemen. When he refused to pay the fine he was issued with a court summons, but the case has now been dropped due to a lack of evidence.

The incident occurred when Brown encountered two policemen whilst he walking down Cornmarket Street after leaving the Cellar night club in the early morning of 31st May. He is alleged to have shouted out, “Mate, you know your horse is gay, I hope you don’t have a problem with that.” The officers took offence at this comment, and warned Brown not to repeat it. However, he reassured the first officer that he was not insulting both horses, saying, “No, don’t worry. Your horse is fine, it’s his horse, his horse is gay.” He then avoided the restraining arms of his friends, and followed the pair down the street, repeating his comments. “Sam was adamant his equine gaydar was accurate,” eyewitness Daniel-Konrad Cooper told The Oxford Student at the time. The officers considered the comments to be in breach of the Public Order Act, and took Brown into custody, calling on two squad cars and six policemen to make the arrest.

He was released the following morning and issued with an £80 fine for ‘causing harassment, alarm or distress’. Brown decided not to pay the fine, saying he preferred to have the case heard in court. “I thought I was calling their bluff - the solicitor told me it would be unlikely to go any further, and I didn’t feel there was much of a case against me,” he said.

Five months later though he received a court summons, charging him with ‘using threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour within the hearing of a person likely to be caused distress’. He was due to appear at Oxford Magistrates Court on December 16th, and was planning to plead not guilty to the charge, which Cooper described as a “massive overreaction on the part of the police”. However the prosecution had not amassed enough evidence by that stage and the case was postponed.

The final twist in the saga, which has caught the attention of the national press, came last Thursday, when the case was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. Prosecutor Cariad Eveson- Webb said there was a lack of evidence to prove that Brown had been disorderly. However, police have defended their decision to take the case to court.

A spokesman said, “He made homophobic comments that were deemed offensive to people passing by: it is our job to present the case to the CPS and the CPS make the decision whether or not to proceed.” Brown, who first heard the news of his reprieve when he was called by members of the press early on Thursday morning, said he was very relieved it was finally over. Cooper added, “It’s been a farce and a massive waste of police resources from the moment they took issue with a passing comment.

He failed to consider that a) there’s nothing wrong with being gay and b) the horse in question had a definite tell, and would have come across very camp under cross examination in a court of law. Once Brokeback Mountain landed a Golden Globe the police realised gay horses were going to be popular this year, and the tide was against them.”

19th Jan 2006

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