Not an excuse to do nothing. To my eyes it appeared that they were protecting the workers of the testing clinic and trying to get the rowdies to move along. Protecting the public is their first responsibility.
What would you have had the two police officers do? Break out the batons and tasers and guns? The memory of the Capitol insurrection is probably in the back of their minds. This is not a docile crowd.
You’ll also note that I said thoroughly outnumbered. It doesn’t mean that the police need to outnumber protestors, by any means, to take more aggressive action. But we should all be wary about encouraging police to escalate a situation. Especially when we rail about the need for police to de-escalate in other areas.
The good news is that there is video, and it should be possible to find and charge the people responsible, or at least name and shame them.
