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I think the issue is that it works iff the police obey the order, but that if they don't then it is instadeath for the regime's credibility. The chance that police (or troops) will refuse to fire on their own countrymen engaged in a protest half the population finds sympathetic is high enough that governments don't normally want to risk it.
One of the advantages of a large multinational empire is that you can post troops from province A to keep order in province B, so the troops don't see the locals as their own countrymen. This doesn't work in nation-states, but the same general approach applies - this is why Singapore uses Ghurkas as riot police.
I think sympathy is not exactly high. Here is a video of LAPD trampling a protester with their horses:
https://x.com/SilentlySirs/status/1931987304760881629
I've seen that incident noted out in the wild a few times, and so I'm guessing there's an effort to make it the signature image of this fiasco.
We'll see if that sticks. I was rather nonplussed by the video given what 'trampled by horses' conjures in my mind. I see a miscreant whose actions finally met their consequences in the middle of a firework-exploding fracas, and he is actually OK by the end of it.
I'm obviously based, but I think the currency of 'poor innocent protester hurt by fascists for literally no reason' is losing value.
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It looks like they clipped the part right before where it appears the protestor and two other guys with backpacks firebombed the mounted officers. It also seems like the fireworks that get mostly cropped out in that edit might be startling the horses. Although I'm not discounting that the third backpack guy wasn't with the other two. It isn't clear from the video but he gets pulled out from under the tree where the 30ft bolt of fire came from. https://streamable.com/e/bc1sog
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Can Trump dissolve the LAPD and replace it with the Feds until a new police force is assembled? Imagine resolving a long-standing problem practically by accident.
No, but he can put national guard there practically indefinitely. In any case the LAPD is presumably, like most police forces, very pro-Trump and moderately conservative even if the city that pays them definitely isn't. Police are a different stratum these days in large part because of the dysfunction of the social classes who would see policing as an attractive gig making those people unsuitable as cops. Young men get rejected from the police force for marijuana and minor wouldn't-even-be-noticed-otherwise crimes(duh) but also for gambling debt(a big, growing problem among the communities police recruit from most heavily). It's also not a super popular profession with big chunks of the public.
The police are their own social stratum and they protect their own. The actual sympathies of the LAPD aren't the issue, because those are mostly pro-Trump(and the rest are taking bribes). The civilian political leadership is Trump's obstacle.
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