The Associated Press
ATHERTON, Calif. (AP) -- In this San Francisco Bay area community of multimillionaires, police work usually comes down to pampering residents.
“We help little old ladies get their car door open. We fix light bulbs and squish bugs,” Sgt. Eric Grimm told the San Jose Mercury News. “At first you think, ‘I am a crime fighter here to catch bad guys.’ When you get older, you see the bigger picture.”
The town of 7,000 residents _ home of football Hall of Famer Joe Montana and Charles Schwab, founder of the San Francisco brokerage _ has no commercial businesses and relies on residents’ taxes to pay for their protection.
The Atherton Police Department has a $4 million annual budget. It pays officers about $86,000 a year to take care of the five-square-mile jurisdiction, located about 25 miles south of San Francisco.
Police even keep the keys to half of Atherton’s stately homes at their station. They mediate noise disputes. Last year, police answered 1,200 tripped alarms.
“I love our police department,” said resident Marianne Hoffman. Police once responded to a burglar alarm at her house only to find a spider had set off her hypersensitive burglary system.
The city has had two murders since the Eisenhower administration. The last one took place in 1996.