How the demonstrators became complacent with the police

In 2025, protest Police in major American cities increasingly took on a spectacle character: large-scale deployments, theatrical displays, and aggressive crowd-control tactics that emphasized signal power at the expense of public safety. This wasn’t one episode. It followed the deployment of federal troops in several Democratic-led cities, leading to lawsuits and court challenges that local leaders justifiably described as military intimidation.

Los Angeles provided an early model. After protests erupted in June over increased aggressive ICE raids, President Donald Trump ordered nearly 4,000 federal National Guard troops to the city and activated about 700 U.S. Marines. At the same time, he has signaled — online and through traditional media — his willingness to escalate further by invoking the Insurrection Act. Troops stood shoulder to shoulder with long rifles and riot shields while smoke grenades and crowd control munitions blanketed highways and city streets, a situation nominally framed as pacification and to protect federal property but calibrated to provoke confrontation.

Inside the Pentagon, officials scrambled to draft domestic use-of-force guidance for Marines who considered temporarily detaining civilians — an unusually frank entry into a legal gray area, coupled with a highly visible show of force.

By August, the federal government had shifted from occasional deployment to direct control: Trump placed the Washington, D.C., Police Department under federal authority and deployed nearly 800 National Guard troops, exploiting the district’s unique legal weakness. The Washington Post described the city as a “laboratory for the military approach.”

The administration’s rhetoric has not been subtle: Trump has described the crackdown as a sham project, calling Washington a “wasteland for the world to see,” and publicly endorsed fear as a policing tactic, urging officers to “get them down.” City leaders responded that the supposed state of emergency was artificial, noting that crime in the capital was at its lowest levels in several decades. In city after city, the phrase “restoring order” has become a weak euphemism for a pre-emptive show of force aimed at deterring opposition before it reaches the streets.

Throughout Chicagoland, control of protest became openly determined. As “Operation Midway Blitz” intensified in September, officials set up barricades and “protest zones” around the Broadview ICE facility. State police in riot gear lined the perimeter of the area, while federal agents repeatedly fired tear gas and other projectiles into the crowds, according to videos and witness accounts. The most brazen moment came when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared on the roof of the facility alongside armed agents and a camera crew stationed near a sniper position, while the arrests were unfolding below.

This was performative policing at its finest: public safety made into a spectacle with vaguely defined urban threats portrayed as a danger to be neutralized. The absurdity of the shows allowed routine acts of disorderly behavior to be seen as folk hero moments.

This performative shift did not arise out of nowhere. It displaced a calmer, less theatrical — but still controlling — model that had dominated American protest policing for decades. Police researchers refer to this as strategic incapacity: a practice whereby conditions are shaped such that protests are not effective in the first place.