The Los Angeles Police Department’s use of officers on horseback to confront a crowd of people in downtown L.A. on Inauguration Day is being condemned by activists and longtime civil rights leaders as a dangerous violation of past reforms. “It’s like déjà vu,” said Carol Sobel, a prominent attorney whose litigation has forced the LAPD to scale back aggressive crowd control practices in the past. Sobel said the LAPD used to regularly use its mounted unit to clear crowds, which she called “medieval,” but had changed its tactics in recent years after she and others won settlements restricting some of the department’s more aggressive tactics at protests.