While it appears to be legal to have large animals in Highland Park, the city's only known horse has been temporarily moved while the owner improves its living conditions.
After Deadline Detroit discovered a horse living on a trash-strewn lot on E. McNichols last week, Highland Park police investigated over the weekend and discovered the city code says nothing about horses, though virtually all cities in crowded southeast Michigan ban such animals without special permission.
Highland Park's laws mention other farm animals, like cows and sheep, but don't mention horses.
"The city of Highland Park is unorganized, for lack of a better term," said an officer who visited is familiar with the case. He asked to remain anonymous.
This horse, name unknown, was living in a shadeless lot bordered by a barbed-wire fence covered with tarps and the ruins of an abandoned building.
Its home has a strange mixture of elements, even by Highland Park standards: The area is largely abandoned, though fencing and gates on an adjacent building appear to be new.
Containers of clean water are scattered about the corral, along with a few handfuls of hay and litter that is typical on a vacant lot.
A tree house, seemingly abandoned, perches overhead.
Left: An adjacent building. Right: the tree house.A small sign on the locked gate reads: “Trespassing at this facility is a FEDERAL CRIME.
"You are entering a federally authorized Foreign Trade Zone. Theft from this zone is a felony, punishable in federal prison.”
A federal trade zone is generally described as an area that is a restricted-access site in, or adjacent to, a U.S. Customs port of entry. There are larger warehouses nearby, and much barbed wire.
According to the officer, the land is owned by a friend of the horse's owner.
The officer said the owner was told that even though keeping the horse appears to be legal, and the horse looked healthy, the owner would be arrested if he was not able to immediately provide adequate shelter.
The horse had no place to go during a week of violent thunderstorms and high temperatures.
The owner of the horse, who lives nearby in Detroit's Boston-Edison neighborhood, told police he would move the horse to a better location until he could build a shelter.
"I don't understand how he didn't think about shelter," the officer said. "But he seems like a decent guy. He says he's over there a couple times a day. He has kids, they do stuff with it. He has pictures of the horse in a parade, of them riding it."
If a shelter is constructed, the horse will likely be allowed to stay and graze next to the graffiti-covered walls and barbed wire fences, in a foreign trade zone, in Highland Park.
Read more about Highland Park's horse in Thursday's story.
