That "thin blue line" is supposed to protect citizens against the tiny percentage of society that breaks all standards of law and decency to prey upon them. Good police work has long regarded the alert citizen as the police's eyes and ears. But when the police are increasingly warlike and alien to the community citizens no longer trust them. And, in fact, today they are making themselves into the enemy by enforcing, often in brutal ways, laws seen to be of lesser importance to traditional means of keeping the peace.