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.
Consider that NYPD, for all of its faults, actually has the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Which provides citizens the ability to officially complain about bad behaviors of various cops.
However, review boards do not exist for all police forces. And many review boards have insufficient power to properly reprimand a specific cop who does a bad job.
We need a specific organization to police the police. FBI kinda-sorta does it (but not under this administration. Under Obama, the FBI was charged with investigating police brutality). Since the FBI's orders changes with the whims of the President, it is clear we need a long-lasting organization that provides oversight even when a Republican is in office.
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.
That would require a constitutional amendment, right?
I am guessing by your spelling that you are not American so maybe you are not familiar with American history or politics, but this statement could not be more wrong.
Its actually relatively easy to change the structure of the executive branch. An executive order would do, but each President can overturn executive orders as they get elected.
So it needs to be an Act of Congress if we want the organization to last between presidential terms. Of course, a future act of Congress could wipe it out, but that seems like a hard sell if we ensure that Americans remember the lessons from today's unrest.
While I'm certain that there are any number of smaller contrapoints to this, especially in college towns with vivacious activist communities, I can't recall any situation where so many municipal LEOs have been so wrongfooted and outmanned in recent memory.
What if the law says explicitly that an officer in uniform without a badge and name tag has no legal authority and can be presumed to be committing a felony?
I fear that is the exact point of putting them there in the first place.
The most important part of law, is law ENFORCEMENT. If you do not assign someone to enforce a law that is written, then it will be ignored.
Well, I doubt they have better options avail. I doubt active soldiers trained to kill as fast as possible would be any better. Let's be honest, they cannot let major buildings and institutions in DC get overrun...
Do you have a source for this? I'm not aware of any widespread protests that are coordinated by activists AND the government.
Maybe have the top-level official be elected at a very-fine granularity, but with the power to enforce across locality lines? Like—elect at the county level, but can enforce anywhere in the State?
Surely you're joking! Grab a history book. Now where would you like to start? I'd suggest you begin 1861 (or a little before) when US Americans went on a four-year mad spree to kill each other which they did in such huge numbers that the death toll tallied more than that of all other wars the US has fought in (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc.).
(From my observation of the present troubles, it seems to me that many of the issues that caused the 1861-65 War Between the States still aren't resolved 155 years later.)
A good example of how this is somewhat standardized among more professional organizers is the March For Our Lives planning Toolkit, wherein they propose having dedicated liasons to serve as intermediaries between the organizers, city, and police. [0]
The collaboration needn't necessarily be initiated by the organizers, however. It's just as, if not more likely that local government reaches out to event planners in order to assess any potential security needs.
Women's march: >_A spokeswoman for the city told Philadelphia magazine that officials had discussed security measures with the march’s organizers “prior to and during planning for the march, and organizers understood the public safety concerns and our responsibilities in ensuring a safe event” but confirmed that “permitting was not contingent on agreeing to these measures.”_[1]
More Recently:
>_"We do not tolerate these acts of protest. We celebrate these acts of protest," Hogsett said. "And just as with yesterday we will continue to work with event organizers to ensure they have a venue to deliver their nonviolent message without interference."_[2]
[0]https://everytown.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/March-For-O...
[1]https://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/01/19/womens-march-phila...
[2]https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/indianapolis/2020/...
Frankly, the American people don't care enough to know their own President, Representative, Senator, Mayor, Governor, Sheriff, School Board, HOA committee members, county commission, and PTA board.
If anything, we need more power consolidated into fewer people. So that Americans know who to blame. In many cases, these "police brutality" issues are extremely local, caused by the local Sheriffs of each individual location. And yet, people don't know who to blame when these things happen.
There are too many positions, so officials can hide behind the confusion and avoid responsibility.
Crowd control - especially when that crowd is being adversarial - is its own art, separate from the typical functions of law-enforcement, and one rarely called upon. My point was that few LEOs have experienced real riots/unrest or regularly trained for that function, because it is such a rare occurence. Most of those who have are likely retired, and their successors largely operating on second-hand knowledge.
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?
Ultimately anyone can arrest anyone comitting a felony. Lighting a habitable structure on fire, or causing great bodily harm are ethical reasons to use any force necessary.
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.