The New Hampshire Troopers Association and the New Hampshire Police Association agree.
Legalizing casino gambling wouldn’t endanger public safety but would in fact be a boon to law enforcement budgets, New Hampshire state police and police officers argued Monday.
No more crime than adding a large mall. Troopers are stretched thinn. There are even plea’s for concern over your loved ones waiting for help at the scene of an accident. All because Maggie Hassan’s budget relies on 80 million dollars from a revenue source that does not yet exist?
So you people in New Hampshire, you better forget about any other problem gambling might bring with it because there is no other way to pay for more troopers. Got it.
One more thing.
Dave Young, president of the police association, said casino revenue could be used to restore funding to a program for troubled children.
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Young also said without gambling revenue, police efforts to combat drugs and help the mentally ill would be impaired. He said the state’s 22-member drug task force, which is a mix of state and local officers, could be cut in half without a boost in funding.
Gambling revenue also clears up toe-nail fungus, makes your teeth whiter, and (coincidentally) may result in more dues paying officers to various police associations.
I have no problem with directing resources to public safety, by the way, but it occurs to me (still) that if state employees just paid for more of their own benefits (kind of like the way I have to invest for my own retirement out of my paycheck by myself), you’d free up an awful lot of money for more important things than supporting New Hampshire’s public employee aristocracy. And you wouldn’t need to pretend that gambling doesn’t have a significant social cost that goes past the amount of crime you get from the average mall.
