Sounds like what they're already doing.
This would be pretty blatant. Think the police beating a celebrity with baseball bats on live TV.
Government breaks the rules all the time. It's usually done in ways that no one can prove without long costly court battles, in grey areas of paperwork or similar. Think the FDA trying to ban independent cheese makers. Or the BATFE making an overreaching judgment in firearm regulation. Or BLM redefining areas so that people could no longer use federal property for recreational purposes.
Government drones are not mustache twitching villains in secret volcano layers. They're middle age office workers, with a mortgage, kids, a car loan, etc. They rationalize their pretty evil. Obviously, nature is Good (ok, it is, we're on fairly firm ground here), so it's Good to keep icky humans from using land. People getting sick is bad and I think wood is too dangerous to be used in food preparation, so let's ban wood in food preparation. Or I don't feel like reading approximately five THOUSAND pages of boring regulations and another couple thousand pages of existing decisions because it's a Friday, so I'm going to write something good enough and call it a day so I can pick up little Suzy from daycare.
There's generally three types of evil government wankers.
- The blatantly evil bastards. The sort of folks who mandated methanol during the Chemist wars, and killed thousands. They do exist, but they're pretty rare. Folks who plant evidence, frame an innocent person, etc and justify that the ends justify the means .
- For Your Own Good wankers. Too common, and arguably the most evil. Blatant evil bastards know they're doing something bad, they just rationalize it away. FYOGW literally think they are doing a good thing when they try to enslave other people through thousands of petty restrictions.
- Just Doing My Job. Folks just doing what they're told.