We all watched the same thing in our cities. And we watched as the police chose to launch projectiles into crowds of protestors instead of doing anything about the smashing and looting.
On the first night of large protests (May 29), I found myself in my city of Portland, OR, on SW 3rd and Yamhill. On one side of me (to the East), where a small group of matching black-clad people had gone, were the unambiguous sounds of windows being smashed and building alarms going off. In other directions, especially South and West, there were huge groups of protestors, simply occupying the area.
The police engaged, without a single exception that came to my awareness, in the latter group, breaking them up into smaller and smaller contingents as the night went on, while doing nothing about the much smaller group going around smashing.
I described my experience in detail the following morning.[0]
The same story has emerged from streamed video throughout the USA.
So I don't think there's any evidence at this time that the police view stopping rioting or "active looting" as a goal.
0: https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/gtj1zm/what_i_saw...
Let's take a moment to determine how likely it is that the cops will stop sending small battalions of riot police into situations where they are highly unnecessary. As protests have gotten smaller in many cities, police have started sending riot police that outnumber the protestors. They have shown no interest in measured responses.
It would be nice if the police used data to reduce their use of force, but that appears to be antithetical to their way of thinking.
In the US it is not legally correct to claim that the police have any duty to provide any specific police service. (Warren v. District of Columbia)
But pedantry aside, they could monitor twitter and whatnot for violence outbreak without collecting any identifyable information.
This duty has been used to justify arresting peaceful people and creating violent situations for decades. "He was gonna cause trouble".
These topics bring out a lot of emotion in people, coupled with regular HN passive aggressive snark volleyed back and forth, of which your comment<T> fits.
Anecdotally, I was able to spectate active looting in my own city's downtown when the protests first came to us via various livestreaming instagrammers and while it was mostly a curiosity for me I imagine it would have been useful to a dispatcher who had to decide where to send officers. I don't see why twitter couldn't serve a similarly useful purpose.