Originally it was meant as you described, "what stands between good and evil", but since... about as long as I can remember, back to the early '90s at least, it's also been used as a euphemism for some police officers' "code of silence" about their own misconduct. The idea that "thin blue line" not only stands between "good" and "evil", but between fellow cops and anyone else. In such a case, it insinuates that cops = "good" and the rest of us = "evil" that they have to protect each other from, and when cops start viewing the rest of the populace as "evil" or "the enemy", well... you get itchy trigger fingers and pieces of #### like Derek Chauvin.
It's also something that a lot of fascists and other far-right groups have glommed onto. That whole idea of "law & order" over a "just" society that happens to be mostly white and Christian...
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