This just occured to me. Why do we call our police departments "law enforcement agencies" instead of "rights protection agencies"? Obviously "law enforcement" denotes the enforcement of laws no matter how tyranical they are, whereas "rights protection" denotes only the protection of an individual's rights to life, liberty, and property. It would be an interesting study to see where the phrase "law enforcement" originated, because "rights protection" is the only work that police departments should do. This also gives an insight into our culture's ideas on police work too.
