Arrests of Ulysses S. Grant

There are three reported arrests of Ulysses S. Grant by officers of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD), all for speeding by horse.

After the MPD appeared to confirm the veracity of the arrest in 2012, a number of news media outlets accepted it as fact, although in some cases with reservations.

The image of Grant deferring to West has been cited as a symbol of the rule of law, including in a dissenting opinion at the Supreme Court of the Philippines,[8] in children's education, and in discussions of presidential criminal immunity in the United States.

[13] In a 1901 article regarding a disciplinary action against West, the Post says that he "gained notoriety soon after his appointment by arresting President U. S. Grant for riding horseback on a pavement.

Shortly after being assigned his beat by 13th and M Street NW, West comes to the scene of an incident where a woman and young child have been badly injured by a speeding team of horses, violations being common in that area due to the proximity of Brightwood Trotting Park.

It is endangering the lives of the people who have to cross the street in this locality, and only this evening a lady was knocked down by one of these racing teams.Grant apologizes, commits to following the speed limit in the future, and asks after the injured woman.

Grant, leading the pack, is unable to stop for a full block, but eventually gets his horses under control and returns, followed by six others, some of whom are also government officials.

According to West's account, he is afterward especially called to investigate and then solves the theft of a pair of stallions, rare Arabian horses that had been a sultan's gift during Grant's world tour.

[5][7][20][21] Lanier gave a sequence of events in which officers are unsure if they can charge Grant absent an impeachment, and thus let him off with a fine and impound the vehicle, leaving him to walk back to the White House.

[21][20] As of February 2023[update], the MPD academy's training material references all three arrests, saying that the third occurred in 1877 and characterizing it in terms similar to Lanier's 2012 comments.

[25] In early April 2023, William K. Rashbaum and Kate Christobek of The New York Times also took Lanier's comments as confirmation, but acknowledged the apparent lack of documentation prior to the emergence of West's claim.

[27] Grant scholar Marszalek describes it as an appropriate and "wonderful" irony that a president who championed equality under Reconstruction might have been arrested by a Black man.

[29] Similarly, Nicholas Kristof views the arrest as "a beautiful tribute to democracy" and the rule of law, a repudiation of the idea that "L'État, c'est moi" ('I am the state').