During the Stuttgart 21 protests, the police were told to be confrontational so that "violence-ready elements" among the protesters will 'show their true face'. "Confrontational" meant unprovoked tear gas attacks and baton charges and pepper spray into people's eyes from short distance.

When asked to justify their behaviour, police claimed that they were provoked by violent protesters who used pepper spray themselves and threw stones, and showed two videos as proof. The date/time of the videos was blackened out. Later the same videos were shown in court, with date/time exposed, proving that those events happened hours after the initial police attacks.

(If you speak German, check this TV report for the details.)

The scandalisation and exposure of this case of requested-from-above police violence is not unconnected to the fact that victims were mostly 'decent' middle-class and upper-middle-class people who couldn't be assumed to have been some Black Bloc idiots who 'got what they deserved'. When it hits hard-leftists, working-class youth or immigrants, the evidence will get much less media play.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}