Perhaps. But I wouldn't describe "preventative maintenance" by police as necessarily bad, if (and that's the big question) it can help avoid direct negative con

Perhaps. But I wouldn't describe "preventative maintenance" by police as necessarily bad, if (and that's the big question) it can help avoid direct negative consequences down the road where those negative consequences outweigh the hassle of what they're doing. At some point living with other people will necessarily inconvenience you, whether it's sobriety checkpoints, or directing traffic, or jury dury, or voting, or taxes, or any of the dozens of other things that go into the civic duties of maintaining the general welfare. Obviously there's a balance that must be chosen (e.g. the speed traps in rural Georgia that are so dense that you have to assume they are more for revenue than for safety), but I don't think police activity only becomes legitimate when it's directly focused on a specific and known criminal occurrence.