I’ve seen many videos of the same types of behaviors. My suspicion is things like this are intentional. Police are incredibly aware of how things are framed in media reports and they’re very aware of how little the media questions their actions–though I suspect, from their own actions repeatedly caught in video, this benefit of the doubt they've been afforded may be slipping away.

I genuinely believe that they let the looting happen either to punish the citizens who dared question them, or in the hopes that we’d focus on the looting and not the cops beating citizens down.

In other big cities, cops are kept on a very tight leash during protests and need permission from leadership to intervene.

In some areas, the cops are in league with the violent counter-protesters, which is why they watch them assault law-abiding people and do nothing about it:

...dozens of police looked on, in some cases chatting and sharing pizza with the group. They included Officer Joseph Goodwin Jr., whose brother Richie shoved one protester and was photographed punching another. [0]

Maybe it's the same thing with the looters.

0 - https://www.inquirer.com/news/fishtown-philadelphia-communit...

Only 5 shops? Jeez.

What did you expect the police to do? Stop the mobs while the looting happens? With anti police sentiment so high here, it would be a thousand times higher on the street. I'm not sure stopping the looting there and then would be a good idea.

> What did you expect the police to do? Stop the mobs while the looting happens?

Isn't that their job?