This comment implies a lack of understanding of the nature of protestors, mobs, and what it takes to clear them.

Both answers here mischaracterise the nature of protests and the cops.

First, most police actions during protests are legit and don't require some kind of condemnation, certainly not 'jail'. You don't require someone to use force to control a situation then put them in jail if the step one inch over an ambiguous line.

Second, even if there were excessive penalties, it would do absolutely nothing to quell protests. Protestors absolutely do not care about the specifics, they're not even playing that much attention. They're not reading the research on relative levels of violence per arrest etc.. It's a mob. They're angry. Anger is not rational.

Moroever, the most emotionally aggrieved parties do not care about reality. It doesn't matter how professional the police are, they will live their lives on Twitter condemning the 'police state'.

The Police in the US are generally not brutal - they use too much force, but it's not a fascist state. They're not grabbing people randomly and beating them to a pulp as in authoritarian states. Most examples of grievances are relative minor: someone provokes a cop by walking up to them and saying something, the cop pushes the person, they fall down. Not appropriate, but this is not the Stasi. A cop shoots his paintball gun at a reporter - on purpose. Again, not appropriate. But it's a paintball gun, they're used on people - for fun - all the time. If you're going to have 100000 people involved in a physical confrontation, there's going to be some crossing of lines. So yes, make sure the cops who step across the line are punished appropriately - but by and large, it won't make a difference.

Fourth, this idea that there are specific groups of specific trouble makers is generally not the case. It's a mob, emotions sway back and forth. And FYI if this is the obvious case, sometimes police can move in a little bit but otherwise it's not possible. If there is any agitation at all, then this can't really happen because it's extremely dangerous. A group of 100 people could tear a small team of cops limb from limb if they wanted to, not that it would happen to that extent, but remember that mobs are usually much greater in size than the cops.

Fifth - it's not the 'violent' elements. It's everyone. You don't have the right to block a road every day because you want to. Sorry - not in the constitution. You don't get to break the law because you think your cause is legit. Usually, protests are observed and nothing happens if they peter out. But eventually either due to the length of the engagement, or 'night time' protests which turn violent, then things need to be broken up. This is when regular people need to go home. But they won't. So it becomes a problem.

There's no doubt that some police tactics are just too much, and that should change. But for the most part, I don't think it would move the needle on anything. People gather in large numbers, don't want to to home, it's going to get dangerous sometimes, and, they can't continue to stay forever.

If anything the 'real' concern should be around actual policing, i.e. unnecessary police shootings.