> They were met with regular uniformed police, like in the BLM protests that happened multiple times in the last 12-18 months.
There were uniformed police there as well but they were definitely met by public order response teams who are much more heavily armoured/equipped and travel around in vehicles with blacked out windows. [1] [2] [3]
That's why I said you've got it arse-about. You are getting the order of when things happened wrong.
You said:
> The problem is that when you make protests illegal and meet them with riot police only the most hardened/radical protesters will turn up.
This is not what happened. The initial response was, as is typical with all large scale protests - to have regular uniformed police monitoring it, and controlling traffic/the direction of the protest.
The specialist/better equipped teams like the Public Order Response Team are almost always on standby during a large protest/march. They're only deployed when things get heated or actually turn violent.
This is pretty much the same thing that happens in other western countries whenever there's a large protest.
There were uniformed police there as well but they were definitely met by public order response teams who are much more heavily armoured/equipped and travel around in vehicles with blacked out windows. [1] [2] [3]
[1] https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSXL5iC...
[2] https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSiM5bT...
[3] https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/cee5e8e0abbb5138fa1c8d40...