Take all this with a big grain of salt—it’s based on the oddly naïve assumption that the police are trying to catch the actual instigators, and that they need real evidence to get convictions.
In my experience, the police usually try to create a particular narrative, with the least amount of effort or risk to themselves. The narrative (which they present to the media after the fact) is that they acted with restraint, respecting the peoples’ right to assemble, until a handful of agitators turned destructive and the demonstration threatened to escalate into a major riot—at which point they swiftly intervened, caught enough of the agitators to prevent an escalation, and saved (most of) the city’s businesses from destruction.
Now, they do want to intimidate the crowd to keep things from escalating too far, but they also want to allow for some destruction to legitimize their tactics and to make the argument that the police force needs more officers. So they let the actual instigators alone, because they’re useful to their narrative (to a point) and because the police are cowards who don’t want to engage with the group most prepared to fight back.
Instead, they target:
Journalists, street medics, and legal observers, to remove the crowd’s sense of institutional support and legitimacy;
Anyone unable to fight back (like the disabled, elderly, and children) for pure shock and intimidation with minimal risk;
Those whose mug shots in the papers the next day will support their narrative—the homeless, minorities, and anyone whose face is vaguely weird or scary; and
People who dressed in black bloc fashion, but are clearly by themselves, passive, and not part of an organized group.
These last are the only ones they will try to prosecute, and often their black bloc attire plus the testimony of cops who claim they saw them engaged in destructive activity just before grabbing them will be enough to get a conviction. In this case the anonymity of their dress backfires, because the cops can pin the actions of anyone with similar clothing and body type on them by claiming they saw the act first-hand and caught the suspect immediately afterward.
Meanwhile, the real instigators are convinced that they escaped due to the brilliance of their tactics and not because the cops had no interest in catching them.
Take all this with a big grain of salt—it’s based on the oddly naïve assumption that the police are trying to catch the actual instigators, and that they need real evidence to get convictions.
In my experience, the police usually try to create a particular narrative, with the least amount of effort or risk to themselves. The narrative (which they present to the media after the fact) is that they acted with restraint, respecting the peoples’ right to assemble, until a handful of agitators turned destructive and the demonstration threatened to escalate into a major riot—at which point they swiftly intervened, caught enough of the agitators to prevent an escalation, and saved (most of) the city’s businesses from destruction.
Now, they do want to intimidate the crowd to keep things from escalating too far, but they also want to allow for some destruction to legitimize their tactics and to make the argument that the police force needs more officers. So they let the actual instigators alone, because they’re useful to their narrative (to a point) and because the police are cowards who don’t want to engage with the group most prepared to fight back.
Instead, they target:
These last are the only ones they will try to prosecute, and often their black bloc attire plus the testimony of cops who claim they saw them engaged in destructive activity just before grabbing them will be enough to get a conviction. In this case the anonymity of their dress backfires, because the cops can pin the actions of anyone with similar clothing and body type on them by claiming they saw the act first-hand and caught the suspect immediately afterward.
Meanwhile, the real instigators are convinced that they escaped due to the brilliance of their tactics and not because the cops had no interest in catching them.