San Francisco Police Horse Dies: RIP Charlie (VIDEO)

This article comes to us courtesy of SF Weekly's The Snitch.

By Erin Sherbert

Charlie, Union Square's most lovable yet intimidating law enforcer, has died, just 10 days before he was to officially retire from the San Francisco Police Department, where he worked for the last decade.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO)

Despite his untimely death, the police department and community are still throwing a retirement bash for the 20-year-old Clydesdale-American Quarter gelding, who was best known among cops as "the leader of the herd." He died on July 8 from an intenstinal infection.

Charlie's shindig starts tomorrow at 11 a.m. at Lefty O'Doul's in Union Square. He will be posthumously honored along with his partner, Riddler, and Charlie's officer (aka domestic partner), Matthew Castgnola.

"I met Charlie about a dozen times -- he was huge (1,500 pounds) and Matt is a big guy, too so the combo of the two of them together is quite imposing," said Lee Houskeeper, who is doing PR for the horse party.

In reality, both Charlie and Matt were pretty friendly guys, who attracted all sorts of attention among tourists, especially at Christmas, when they would don Santa hats to trot along the square, Houskeeper told us.

This information just made us want to know even more about Charlie, so we called Castgnola. However, he was taking today off, which means we were unable to reach him.

"It's so sad [Charlie] didn't make it to his retirement," Houskeeper said. "We will miss him."

Here was the last video footage taken of the horse before he died. RIP, Charlie.