Suspect Thought Running From Police Was a Good Idea Until Four Police Horses Chased Him Down

A suspected hand-to-hand drug deal in Jacksonville, Florida, turned into an unusual foot chase on February 4, 2025, when a man ran from officers and quickly discovered he was not only being followed by police, but by police horses.

Bodycam footage channel Midwest Safety described the incident as the channel’s first police chase on horseback, and the footage showed how quickly a routine street-level drug investigation became a mounted pursuit through a commercial area near a McDonald’s and Burger King.

According to the channel’s host, officers had witnessed what appeared to be a hand-to-hand drug deal between a male suspect, later identified as Jordan, and a female suspect, later identified as Alexis. When officers moved in to contact Jordan, he ran, and mounted officers immediately gave chase.

Mounted Officers Move In

The bodycam footage began with officers approaching the male suspect before he suddenly fled.

Within seconds, an officer on horseback could be heard calling to the police horse, Nash, while warning Jordan that he was about to make the situation worse if he kept running.

“Get on the ground,” the officer yelled. “You’re going to get run over.”

The officer repeatedly urged Nash forward, calling him a “good boy” as the horse kept pace with the fleeing suspect. The commands were direct and urgent, but the scene also had the unusual quality of a pursuit where the suspect appeared to be trying to outrun an animal built for exactly that kind of movement.

“Bro, you’re not going to get rid of us on the horse,” one officer told him. “You better stop.”

Midwest Safety’s host later noted that it was hard not to laugh a little at the idea that the suspect thought running from a mounted unit was a good plan. The comment was light, but the point was real: horses give officers a reach and advantage that people often underestimate.

“Told You You Weren’t Going To Outrun Us”

As the chase continued, officers repeatedly ordered Jordan to get on the ground and keep his hands visible.

At one point, the officer warned him to get his hands out of his pockets. Another officer said Jordan had thrown something, which became a key part of the investigation after he was taken into custody.

Eventually, the mounted officers closed the gap and Jordan was stopped near a flagpole or sign area. Officers moved in, grabbed him, and placed him under control.

“Told you you weren’t going to outrun us, bro,” one officer said after Jordan was detained.

The line summed up the chase without needing much extra commentary. On foot, Jordan may have thought he could create enough distance to get away, but against a mounted unit in open space, the math changed quickly.

The bodycam footage showed the officers praising Nash after the chase, with one repeatedly telling the horse he had done a good job.

“Good boy, Nash,” the officer said. “Got that bad man.”

Searching For What Was Thrown

While officers held Jordan, the investigation shifted to whatever he had allegedly tossed during the chase.

Midwest Safety’s host said officers believed Jordan had thrown something on the ground while running, but reports later indicated that the item was never found.

An officer tried to retrace the route, explaining that Jordan had started near one area, moved down the sidewalk by a fence line, and passed through near a sign. Another officer said the item appeared small, which made it harder to locate in the grass, bushes, or parking lot area.

The uncertainty mattered because officers believed the original encounter involved narcotics, but without recovering the tossed item, the case against Jordan became more limited.

One officer also tried to view McDonald’s surveillance footage to see if the cameras captured where the item landed, but Midwest Safety’s host explained that the effort ran into delays. The person who could access the cameras was not immediately available, and officers also dealt with a separate issue when McDonald’s employees reported someone using drugs in the bathroom and wanted that person trespassed.

This is where many street-level investigations become messy in real life. Officers may see enough to act, but if the evidence is small, tossed during a chase, or hidden in a public area, actually proving what happened can become much harder.

The Female Suspect Is Detained

While Jordan was being held, officers also detained Alexis, the female suspect alleged to have been involved in the hand-to-hand exchange.

An officer told her she was not necessarily under arrest at that moment, but she was not free to leave while police sorted out what had happened. She laughed during the exchange, and when the officer asked what was funny, she said she had thought of a joke in her head.

The officer later searched her, and Midwest Safety’s host said police found a crack pipe in her pocket.

At one point, officers discussed whether she had resisted, and one officer said she had not. The focus for her case became the paraphernalia, not the chase itself.

The contrast between the two suspects was important. Jordan’s case centered on running and resisting without violence, while Alexis’ case came from what officers found during the detention.

Officers Joke About The Horsepower

As the scene settled down, some of the tension gave way to the odd humor of a police horse chase in a busy public area.

One officer FaceTimed his family and showed them the mounted unit, explaining that police horses even have badges on their chest gear. When someone asked whether they caught the guy, the officer joked that of course they did because the suspect was on foot and the officers were on horses.

Midwest Safety’s host later said mounted patrol horses are not chosen simply because they are large. He explained that many horses never make it through training because they must handle crowds, traffic, fireworks, yelling, and countless distractions without panicking.

That context matters because mounted units can look ceremonial to people who only see them at parades or crowd-control events. In this case, the footage showed a more practical side of mounted policing, where the horses gave officers height, speed, visibility, and a way to close distance quickly.

“They’re not there for looks,” the host said. “They’re there because they give officers a different perspective, a different reach, and sometimes a pretty big advantage.”

Four Horses Get Credit

Midwest Safety reported that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office later posted about the incident on Facebook and leaned into the horse-related humor.

According to the channel, the sheriff’s office wrote that if someone chooses to run, they will “just go to jail tired,” and added that criminals can run but cannot hide from the department’s “horsepower.”

The sheriff’s office also gave credit to the police horses involved in the incident: Nash, Jax, Judge, and Duke.

Nash was the most visible horse in the bodycam footage, with the officer calling him forward throughout the chase, but the department’s post made clear that the mounted unit worked as a team.

The joke landed because the footage was unusual, but the message behind it was ordinary police advice: running usually makes a situation worse, especially when officers already have enough information to detain someone.

Case Outcomes

Midwest Safety reported that Jordan was charged with resisting without violence. He pleaded no contest, was adjudicated guilty, ordered to pay $33 in court costs and fines, and released back into the public.

Alexis was charged with use or possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia after the crack pipe was found in her pocket. According to the channel, she took a plea deal and pleaded no contest in exchange for a withhold of adjudication, meaning the judge accepted her plea but did not formally convict her.

She was also ordered to pay $33 in court costs and fines and released.

The outcome shows how the final charges can look much smaller than the bodycam footage feels in the moment. The chase was dramatic because of the horses, the commands, and the public setting, but without the allegedly tossed item being recovered, Jordan’s final case centered on the act of fleeing rather than a larger drug charge.

Still, the video became memorable for a simple reason: most people have seen suspects run from patrol cars or officers on foot, but far fewer have seen someone try to outrun four police horses.

In this case, the mounted unit did exactly what it was trained to do, and the suspect’s escape attempt ended with officers proving that “horsepower” was not just a figure of speech.