What I'm suggesting is that it's a little hypocritical to elect politicians into office, allow them to dictate the legality of certain actions within their jurisdiction, then be upset at the officers for upholding those laws. At what point do we accept that the establishment of laws we disagree with are ultimately our own fault?
Not to keep coming back to the Nazis...but Hitler was popularly elected and under your formulation the jews should have just lined up. They did it to themselves via the ballot box.
Furthermore, here in the US very few people can vote on laws. the most we can do is elect one of the candidates put in front of us, who then vote on laws without input from those who voted, but plenty from those who can finance their next campaign. In a very real sense, we have little to no practical power over our government, and less than 50% of the population votes, so those in charge don't really even have a popular mandate.
You can suggest that these officers simply refuse to uphold these laws, but what happens when a large number of officers do this and are punished by their superiors?
Though in this case their superiors order it...until it started to make them look bad/unnecessary.
Wouldn't crime rates, in theory, go up?
Did they go up during the NYPD work stoppage?
Would it be worth having the number of assault/rapes/murders go up, just to stand up for your moral beliefs?
There is no reason to believe that would be the case?...besides all the crimes you listed, the police are TERRIBLE at preventing or solving. The chances an officer is there to stop a crime in progress is essentially nil. So whats the difference?