Interactive: Watch This Protest Turn from Peaceful to Violent in 60 Seconds
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Second, as someone who used to live in that area, I'm very very sad. Watching the videos and comparing them to the last video (after they banned tear gas) is like night and day. In particular the police seem a lot further back from their barricades. In the violent example, the police were so close that they snatched that pink umbrella, which started the violence. And no doubt, the police instigated this. It's natural instinct if someone is trying to steal something from you to try and pull it back. If the police didn't want to block their line of sight, they shouldn't have been so close to their own barricade. They could have stepped back a few feet to create more of a 'no-mans land' between the barricade and the police line, and still easily be able to control that space so no protesters would enter (kind of like the last picture, where the police are way back there, but the protests still don't try to get in their face). SPD has had a bad rap for decades (all the way back to WTO protests) and they honestly deserve it. This is just bad policing.