What’s the best way to stop them from starting? What de-escalation methods are proven to work? Surely these would be in use already in far-left strongholds like Portland and Seattle.
You're assuming the police actually WANT to de-escalate. They generally do not. (If you are suggesting the police in "far-left strongholds like Portland" behave or are motivated qualitatively differently than police in other cities... nope).
They want to scuffle, they want to punish people who have verbally antagonized or threatened them, or who they think deserve it; they want to protect challenges to their authority and maintain control of the situuation, or think they need to crack down hard to avoid a total social breakdown (the opposite of de-escalation) -- they have a variety of values and priorities, avoiding a "riot" is seldom one of them. ("Winning" the riot is).
Here in Baltimore, the last few months of protest had very little property destruction or scuffling. Some here wanted to credit the restraint or intentions of "proestors" -- I think it's far more likely that the police administrators this time, somehow, got the forces in the street to actually avoid escalation.
I am a middle-aged leftist who has been at many many protests. Every "riot" I have been near was initiated by escalation by police, including chemical weapons use, agitating the crowd to respond, bringing more response in turn. If the police avoid escalation, it doesn't happen. This isn't always what the leftist radicals want to admit either -- they may want to think it's "the people" who are in control of things, who are angry enough to rise up or something. In fact, it's the folks who are trained to act together, with the better weapons and the (usually) disciplined command and control structure, who have pre-existing relationships of working together as a team -- who largely determine whether to escalate or de-escalate -- and this isn't that surprising.
The police usually don't actually want to de-escalate, they want to knock heads. By "the police" I mean both the "white shirts" and the "blue shirts". Sometimes the decision-makers might have preferred not to escalate, but literally would not be able to control those they ostensibly control though; the police are there for a fight.
I think you're way off the mark to be honest. Riot police broadly follow orders, they aren't acting on their own to any significant degree to begin with, let alone enough to express these motivations. I'm with you that riot cops tend to be thugs, but... So are rioters.
I don't think the riots were the result of police escalation, that strikes me as an attempt to sell snow to eskimos. I think they were the result of people realising they could get away with it, which is why they stopped when the national guard stepped in. People aren't torching car dealerships and looting flat screen TVs from Walmart because of the police, they're doing it because it's fun.
I dunno what I have seen and what matches the experience of most other people I know who have been there, is some parts of the crowd do SOMETHING illegal or 'inappropriate', sure, the cops respond with force or chemical weapons, which escalates the situation by angering/triggering the crowd to be more aggressive towards the police, rinse repeat.
I am not denying some kind of provocation from the crowd. What we're talking about is if the police respond with escalation or de-escalation. Separate from an issue of "fault", just an objective observation of what happens.
I'm not talking about whole-scale insubordination from the police. I'm saying individual cops and unit-leaders have discretion of when to respond with what force -- like cops do generally.
I think one reason the national guard makes a difference is because they have very different training, risk-tolerance, different ingrained norms about when it's appropriate to use force against civilians. Military is trained to try to avoid using force against civilians; police not so much because that's literally their job. We are seeing lately how often the police respond to any perceived risk with overwhelming force -- that is what they are trained to do. National guard, when facing civilians, are trained to use it as a last resort, police seem trained (whether explicitly or implicitly) to use it as a first resort, at least when dealing with certain populations (protestors, poor people) where traditionally mainstream society sees them as "dangerous". Honestly, I think the national guard is a lot more likely to respond to "provocation" from civilians with de-escalation or just holding ground; the police much more likely to respond by escalation, some form of violence against the crowd in general, in a way that brings an escalated reaction.
"The idea that the US Democrat party is “far-left” is hilarious from here in Europe."
Just to add to this:
Right-wingers who fantasize about Seattle or Portland being "far-left" really need to visit and see that capitalism is alive and well there (thriving, actually), private property has not been abolished, the workers don't own the means of production, and massive socioeconomic inequality still exists.
None of these would be true if Seattle or Portland were really "far-left".
You're assuming the police actually WANT to de-escalate. They generally do not. (If you are suggesting the police in "far-left strongholds like Portland" behave or are motivated qualitatively differently than police in other cities... nope).
They want to scuffle, they want to punish people who have verbally antagonized or threatened them, or who they think deserve it; they want to protect challenges to their authority and maintain control of the situuation, or think they need to crack down hard to avoid a total social breakdown (the opposite of de-escalation) -- they have a variety of values and priorities, avoiding a "riot" is seldom one of them. ("Winning" the riot is).
Here in Baltimore, the last few months of protest had very little property destruction or scuffling. Some here wanted to credit the restraint or intentions of "proestors" -- I think it's far more likely that the police administrators this time, somehow, got the forces in the street to actually avoid escalation.
I am a middle-aged leftist who has been at many many protests. Every "riot" I have been near was initiated by escalation by police, including chemical weapons use, agitating the crowd to respond, bringing more response in turn. If the police avoid escalation, it doesn't happen. This isn't always what the leftist radicals want to admit either -- they may want to think it's "the people" who are in control of things, who are angry enough to rise up or something. In fact, it's the folks who are trained to act together, with the better weapons and the (usually) disciplined command and control structure, who have pre-existing relationships of working together as a team -- who largely determine whether to escalate or de-escalate -- and this isn't that surprising.
The police usually don't actually want to de-escalate, they want to knock heads. By "the police" I mean both the "white shirts" and the "blue shirts". Sometimes the decision-makers might have preferred not to escalate, but literally would not be able to control those they ostensibly control though; the police are there for a fight.