As far as what's going on during rhese protests, a fantastic resource is live streams from reporters on the ground such as
Robert Evans in Portland and
Unicorn Riot in Minneapolis. These are of course in the thick of things and therefore limited to what they see directly - but it also gives a greater understanding of context than seeing carefully clipped videos of rioting or police violence.
I've personally watched Robert's streams and seen repeated violent escalation by Portland PD against protesters - eg. Protesters sitting in the street with hands up. Police move in ostensibly to clear the intersection and proceed to shove them to the ground and strike them with batons. Police then occupied said intersection that they were ostensibly trying to clear and continued blocking traffic.
This is just one instance but it seems to be a microcosm of the situation in large parts of the US - or at least it was, police seem to be showing more restraint now - where police are unable to deal with situations -without- resorting to brutal violence and mass tear gassing. The incident I just talked about was immediately followed by a huge deployment of tear gas affecting not just protestors but traffic moving through the area.
We have also seen repeated violent attacks on the media, from shooting a reporter with pepperballs to smashing an australian news crew with shields and batons. An independant photojournalist had her eyeball popped by being shot in the head with a police marking round (paint grenade) and is now permanently blinded. There are many more examples of this.
For my personal stance of the matter, it's entirely unsurprising that these situations turn into riots. If you're going to be gassed, beaten, or shot with rubber rounds regardless of what you do, what reason do you have to
not vent your anger at the situation? It's all well and good to condemn rioting and looting from a moral standpoint on my moral high horse - when I'm the world away, white, and comfortably middle class. I feel it's a little different for someone who's angry, poor, and repeatedly tear gassed.
That being said, I do -not- think that the repeated brutality of police is due solely or even majorly due to these police being evil, malice-ridden thugs. The core of the issue to me seems to be that there are -no- contingencies or training to address civil unrest any other way. The playbook is restricted to 'shout at them to leave' and then if they do not comply 'get vicious'.
This is a common thread in US police training, much of which is done by David Grossman - who runs seminars for police on 'killology'. The training that he presents shows them footage of police being killed, tells them that the world is out to get them, and essentially primes officers for constantly being on edge and jumping to extreme force to resolve situations. The above-mentioned Robert Evans released an episode of his podcast covering this training and the background of Grossman here:
Source: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0xt9iFLH9vx5GimA8y9FPl?si=eqJgrnoIRp-V1HMaRUejfg
(Apologies for not hyperlinking, on mobile and the button stopped working)
So, IMO, the way forward with preventing police deaths is not just the important task of rooting out racial prejudice - it is also with providing police with proper training in de-escalation and reasonable use of force, as well as integration of police with the community - rather than teaching them that they are a class apart from other people and that they are constantly under siege from all angles.