Abolish the EPD

Whenever there is a serious incident in town, the state police come to deal with it. This suggests a question: what does EPD do with its multi-million dollar budget?

Yesterday, as the state police were investigating the accident, EPD patrol cars were doing work, blocking off roads and flashing red and blue lights.  Today, I noticed that there were two (armed) EPD officers holding STOP/SLOW signs to direct traffic, something a teenager could do as a summer job.

I often see police chasing down cars for driving a little over 30 mph, or, now, for talking on their phones. We've all seen them hiding in St. Michael's parking lot, at the Rockingham Feed and Supply, at the Lincoln St. School lot, various locations on Portsmouth Ave, and (now that the daycare is going up) in the parking lot of Tiger's on Epping Rd. Is this serving and protecting? Absolutely not.

Example: a few years ago, a car was parked overnight during the winter on Pine St. outside the Exeter Inn. Written in soap on the car was "Just Married!" On the windshield was an orange ticket. Mind you, the weather was fine--no snow to plow; the car was causing no trouble. So as not to ruin their morning, I paid off their ticket and wrote "congratulations" on the cash.

Taking a look at a random week's police log, one sees that most of the other incidents to which they respond fall broadly into two categories:

1. Drug-related arrests, i.e., victimless crimes. Naturally, the war on drugs is a windfall, so of course EPD pursues such non-crimes.
2. Random services like returning a lost dog, responding to an accidental alarm, etc. If there is a use for a police department, it would be for these only. Of course, 20 cops and a $3 million budget isn't necessary for it.

So, why not cut the budget of EPD? Ideally, it would be cut to $0. If not, I don't understand how one can claim to be doing public "service" for $100k/yr salary (plus benefits).