While this isn’t the first time this year that the riot squad has brutalized accredited reporters, even supporters of the department say they were appalled at the scale of the police violence.

“The reaction was overkill, they badly outnumbered the protesters and appear to have been triggered by someone removing a barricade,” said one source, who works at city hall but is not authorized to speak to the media. “I saw the footage. Some guy pulls down a barricade and the police grabbed him, fired tear gas at the crowd and charged them. It was ugly.”