I live in NYC and was first-hand there for the BLM protests. Can attest that they were almost unilaterally peaceful from my anecdotal experience. The police were extreme in their responses. I was at Un Sq and ppl in the streets were just chanting "no justice, no peace" (but peacefully doing so, I suppose a bit of irony), and suddenly the police yelled out to disperse. I was off the to the side just to observe a moment of history, and watched ppl obey that order, yet personally got rammed by a police shield and hit with a baton because it just takes a crowd a certain amount of time to move. I was livid and saw police barbarity in action.

There certainly were bad actors. I saw a police van lit on fire. But from what I read in the papers, these were prosecuted and out of staters coming to NY to basically get their rocks off. The overall movement was peaceful.