The quality of journalism for NPR has gone downhill so much.
A real "protest" is inherently violent. Your are encouraging the state to use it's monopoly of force against you. Your goal is to ensure that others see the state using force needlessly against you. When others see others using violence against you they begin to reconsider the conditions that put you into this situation to begin with.
So using the police as a tool against protesters only proves them right. A protest should never be met with violence, unless you want to encourage more action from protestors.
In other words the police are the wrong tool for the job. The police absolutely should not be involved in protests. This is a great job for social workers.
Riots on the other hand should be met with police action. However, if you have a riot then that means you didn't hear the demands of the people to begin with. If you make it to a full blown riot you have MESSED UP.
The whole philosophy behind protests is really easy to understand. Spend a bit of time reading Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, a little Ghandi and then you start with a lot of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to understand the philosophies behind American protests.
Or you lost a sports game, let's not pretend the bar for rioting is very high...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_rio...
EDIT: Sorry, I missed "you just won a sports game" as a reason for rioting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_riot
> After the Canadiens defeated the Boston Bruins in the first round of the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs, fans began rioting in celebration.
But it's also a separate issue entirely. It's like seeing a scatter plot and being like but what about this point right here ---------------------------->
However to understand why this would be the case(starting from a naive POV), you have to go beyond general discussion of injustices and reforms into deeper examination of the power structure and loyalties, which is hard to surface out of soundbite media.