in 18 years of partying and 150+ parties/raves I’ve only seen “riot police” 3 times and the only people what have got attacked have tried to “stand up” to the cops. However much people disagree with them being there when its got that far they are trained to clear the area and not to lose.
There were some bad things what happened in the 1970s and 1980s but now the feds are watched a lot more closely and trained to use brains as well as brawn when clearing areas, so the amount of injuries (on both sides) are less than they were 20-30 years ago.
In particular Metpol and those forces what crosstrain with MP are taught to “pick the biggest hardest bastards” and “bring them down first” as a psychological tactic.
That said, some officers do tend to pick on young (and otherwise harmless) girls, as paradoxical as it seems its usually in the forces where there are many high ranking female officers, as its a way amongst male cops what have had to otherwise hide their misogyny of “getting their own back”. (to work this out all you need to do these days is go on the force website and check the chain of command which is all out in the open for most forces!)
TBH my mum has much harsher stories about police brutality from her country (Malaysia) than I could ever come up with!
They have the FRU (Federal Reserve Unit) – she told me how in the 1960s they kicked to death some young lad with learning difficulties / disability because he was slightly cheeky to them, and just thought they were doing society good by “culling out a useless handicapped person when Malaysia needs strong men to survive”
There is also the Rela, who are a volunteer (but sometimes armed!) force rather like a cross between Dads Army, the Taliban, the Special Constabulary and Daily Mail readers. They were recently asked to round up suspected illegal immigrants (mostly from Indonesia and Phillipines) and executed seven without trial, dumping their bodies in a lake!
TBH I don’t know of any country in the world (not even the really liberal ones) where protests are not dealt with by cops in some way or another, nor where people are allowed to constantly get away with occupying someone elses private property.
