Easier to hold water in a sieve than to contain and constrain the abuses of power practiced by those who have sworn an oath to protect our rights. Whether the overreaching occurs overtly as in the Drug War and its literal assaults on peaceable citizens or covertly in a blinding web of prohibitions and regulations, the threads of control sink deeper and deeper into every crevice of our daily lives. The most direct interface linking those distant tin-dictators with the common citizens are the police forces in our various municipalities. That thankless job will fall to the street officer patrolling the streets of your town.
Younger cops move into the ranks having never known a different system.
As with the majority of all citizens, few beginning police candidates are aware of the true history of this country or the principles which led to its flourishing. Older cops who might refuse to confiscate a weapon, to conduct a warrantless search, or who might conveniently decline to notice an infraction of a bad law are replaced by those inculcated with a lifetime of government-school propaganda. Brainwashed or merely ignorant, the result is the same. The evidence of such attitude shifts are not difficult to find. Consider the police and INS agents who snatched Elian Gonzalez from his family in the dark hours of the morning while waving automatic weapons about and threatening to shoot innocent bystanders.