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Meanwhile, the riot riots.

Tear gas won’t manage gentrification and economic inequality, and overarching societal reform won’t manage a riot in progress.

Right tools for the job and all that...

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You say this with such certainty, but empirically we have seen that protests turn violent once police start escalating and attacking them, and turn peaceful again after the cops leave [0][1][2][3][4][5]. So no, it's not the right tool for the job. The protests have continued precisely because the government has not showed a single sign of even beginning efforts toward overarching societal reform.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/31/portland-pr...

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/2/21278285/peaceful-protest-...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-p...

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/opinions/aggressive-police-pe...

[4] https://www.vox.com/2020/6/12/21279619/protesters-police-vio...

[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-keep-using-fo...

And yet parts of the government with abilities to act locally (where protests occur) allow the rioting instead of doing anything useful. When the politicians show up they get attacked. There is plenty wrong on either side but burning down your own city and destroying local businesses is not going to help anybody.

When a politician, singular, showed up, he got attacked [by protestors] in Wisconsin. Of course, most of the violence and threats toward politicians at protests has been at the hands of police [0][1][2]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/06/03/all-t...

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/nypd-sergeants-benevolent-associati...

[2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/norman-oklahoma-councilwoman-a...

You seem to have forgotten about Rand Paul being attacked as well. Then theres the teenager getting into a battle with three criminals (or so they allege) at least one of which was holding a gun they had no right to own. What was the Police's hand in that situation that caused grown adults to attack a teenager?

Apologies. I forgot about Rand Paul because in all the videos of the incident, he appears unharmed. To him, violence is being surrounded by his constituents.

I'm sure they would of left him unharmed if he had no police escorting him.

Empirically from those same links, tear gas as a “riot” control agent works.

It’s impossible not to see an obvious strategy of police provocation, hilariously on display in [2], but tear gas as a tactic to disperse groups of people can’t seriously be argued not to work, as shown in that very same [2].

[0]: “...the protests largely ended the same way for days: with tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests.”

[1]: “The vast majority of people began to disband, while some stayed behind to continue protesting.”

[2]: “Minutes later, the march ended in chaos as the police lobbed flash-bang grenades and sprayed the protesters with tear gas and pepper spray.”

[3]: focused on strategy

[4]: ‘officers have met peaceful protesters...with disproportionate and brutal force, often for no reason but to “disperse” a crowd.’

[5]: focused on effects of tactics

The people being dispersed won’t always be peacefully protesting injustice, and the police themselves won’t always be the subject at hand.

I also specifically mentioned it as a tool for managing a riot in progress, not provoking the current protests occurring across the US.

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