Wesson Ranch Serves as Home Base for Mississippi Highway Patrol Mounted Division

Special to Wesson News

Kate Malta, a Mississippi Highway Patrol Mounted Division volunteer (left) learns how to handle horses with children.  Division Captain Ellis Lee Morrison (right) is assisted by Trooper Stargell Catchings in teaching Malta.

A 160-acre Wesson ranch is the base of the relatively new Mississippi Highway Patrol (MHP) Mounted Division.

Ellis Lee Morrison, a 28-year Wesson resident, life-long horseman and veteran state Highway Patrol officer is Captain of the Special Operations Group (SOG) based at his ranch off St. John Road. 

Along with SWAT, Air Op, Motorcycle, K9 and CRASH teams, the new SOG enhances MHP’s law enforcement capacity.  The four-year old unit is on call 24/7 to assist in search and rescue of missing persons and accident victims in hard-to-reach areas, tracking down prison escapees and others targets of man hunts, providing an added level of security and crowd control at special events – fairs, parades, sports and entertainment attractions – and presenting a public face for the Highway Patrol.

Horses, Morrison notes, are a good fit in law enforcement because “they have keen senses of sight, smell and hearing; they have a height advantage, are stealthy and can go to places where others can’t.”

“It was a vision of Governor Tate Reeves and Commissioner of Public Safety Sean Tindell,” Morrison explains.

They asked Morrison, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Bureau of Investigations at the time, to create the new division and lead it, following a model similar to K9 teams in which the leaders train, feed and maintain dogs on their own properties.  Morrison’s credentials as a horse trainer with his own ranch in a good central location made him the ideal choice.

Morrison took the job, and started by consulting with Texas officials at Capital Security in Austin and the state’s Department of Criminal Justice, which has 100 horses available to track prison escapees.  He acquired the initial horses for the new Mississippi unit from Texas.

Four years later, the MHP Mounted Division has 12 equines – two at the Mississippi State Prison at Parchman and 10 on Morrison’s Wesson ranch – Colt, Nemo, Maggie, Delta, Dake, Missie, Chewy, Bradley, Tank (Morrison’s personal horse) and Elvis, a mascot pony.  One other permanent police officer works with Morrison – Trooper Stargell Catchings, and the division has 12 special duty members.  Volunteers who are good with children also play an important role in the division’s public relations activities.

Trooper Stargell Catchings rides Tank in training session at Wesson ranch, which is base for Mississippi Highway Patrol Mounted Division.

Training the horses is ongoing at Morrison’s ranch, with the major focus on desensitizing them to distractions from their job focus – sights and sounds, people, other animals.  Morrison even has a pig on his ranch to annoy the horses so they aren’t spooked on a search and rescue mission when they encounter a Mississippi wild hog.

“The Mounted Division is at work constantly,” Morrison summarizes.  “When our horses aren’t involved in a law enforcement function, they are interacting with people – particularly children – presenting the Mississippi Highway Patrol positively.  As trained, friendly animals that also support public safety, they uniquely demonstrate that law enforcement is not to be feared, but is there to help, not harm.”