Doubly so when they're prison riot control officers who all look like they're clones of Byron Hadley, The Screw Everyone Hates from "Shawshank Redemption".
When a prison guard sees a crowd chanting protests, they are going to react very badly.
Get them out.
And get badges on the rest of them. Then get them out, too.
But I would argue that Bureau of Prisons riot units may well be better equipped to handle civil unrest of this sort than most conventional police depts on the following grounds:
The US doesn't have much institutional experience dealing with rioters or massive protests of this nature. What little there is, is in the hands of local agencies, and hasn't necessarily spread to other departments. The closest thing to a law enforcement agency with significant crowd control experience is the Bureau of Prisons.
Your average beat cop is trained for day-to-day enforcement actions, and is accustomed to a certain level of respect or deference not typically granted to prison guards. They're also accustomed to significantly outnumbering the belligerent actors they encounter. The stress of operating in situations where you're significantly outnumbered by contemptuous and openly hostile people is more than likely alien to them.
Conventional police forces - to my knowledge - do not train riot control techniques with any regularity. Comparing livestreams of the Floyd protests with Greek and German crowd control operations, the American police tend to be less coordinated in their advances (more gaps in their lines, they tend to be spread out from one another, they respond less quickly in a coordinated manner), and are quicker to react to potentially hostile actions with violence. Though I'll admit that this could be a difference of crowd control philosophy, or an adaptation to America's wider streets but it does strike me as being more likely to result in unnecessary injury to protestors, and vulnerable to charges by rioters. I believe that the near ubiquitous misuse of rubber bullets by LEOs during the protests are evidence of this.
The Bureau of prisons riot control units may not be accustomed to the scale of the current protests and unrest, but I expect them to be better equipped to coordinate police actions, and operate on the front lines than somebody that writes tickets, and occasionally has to deal with Karen, or an angry junky.
Paying attention by throwing Bureau of Prisons Riot Control officers at free, protesters is very clearly doing the exact opposite. Frankly, if anything, it vindicates the need for more and potentially more extreme protest.
At this point, 0eople need to be sitting down with lawmakers. Law enforcement needs to chill the he'll out, and clean house, and communities need to collect themselves, and get their composure restored.
You don't "handle" large scale protests/riots with the application of more thug. That's how you escalate it. You get people talking. If people are talking, you're getting things on the way to a peaceful resolution. For Christ, sake, the entire damn chain of events started because a bunch of cops ignored all protestations and pleadings from the public around them.
Can we stop proving these people have a bloody point please?
I guess you've grown up in a pretty privileged low/no-crime place. Go to any high crime neighbourhood. The cops could be arresting someone for murder & rape and lots of neighbours and community folk will gather round screaming at cops to not arrest them amongst other nonsense.
Focusing on the task at hand and ignoring public protestations would be self learned by a cop within a couple months on the job even if it was not in their training.