>>115445882When violence instigators have already been caught deliberately hiding in groups of protesters waiting to start shit, it becomes really difficult to take any action without somebody seeing it as indefensible.
Consider if you were part of White House security, your job is first and foremost to defend the building and the representatives, bureaucrats, POTUS, etc. You're faced with a large crowd of pissed off people, and a couple of them dressed in nondescript clothes start chucking bricks or rocks.
How do you tell who's the protester and who's the rioter? When a couple people act violently but they're part of a large crowd the only way to deal with them effectively is to disperse the crowd, CS gas is extremely uncomfortable but it's exceedingly rare for it to be fatal. It's a lot safer than chasing after them, or just shooting at them. Firing off a lethal weapon could mortally wound an innocent person, and trying to chase down one scumbag in a crowd of already pissed off people with likely result in either you getting the shit beaten out of you and the scumbag gets away.
I'm not going to pretend like it's ideal, but I think the partisans in this situation are doing as much as humanly possible to warp the reality of the situation.
