Why do police escalate against protesters, often leading to arrests without charge, charges that won’t stick, lawsuits that cost cities money? Wouldn’t it make more sense to let people march without escalation or provocation? Well listen.

If you let people march without shooting teargas at them, then sure you might actually keep those storefronts intact & avoid the lawsuit in 5 years. But you’ll also see people keep marching and building on that.

But if you brutalize protesters, lock them up & pile bullshit charges on them, then you make sure a bunch of resources are spent supporting them & fighting legal battles that would otherwise be devoted just to the original cause.

You inflict physical & emotional trauma on people you beat & imprison. Even if they get vindicated later in some way, you've taken them out of the work for a while. You scare off others permanently or temporarily. More people get worn out doing the support work mentioned above.

The mere fact of arrest & charges scares off otherwise sympathetic people who originally backed the cause but think there's no smoke without fire. By the time history proves them wrong, the moment's passed.

The violent police actions lead to protesters escalating in the short term, which then provides a pretext (as if you needed it) for both more repression whether it's violence or legislation, and also scares off even more of those on-the-fence potential sympathizers.

So yeah, you make things 'worse' in the short term if the idea is to preserve the peace as many ordinary people would understand it. But that's not the purpose of what you're doing. You're preserving order, and that requires you to break movements.