Typical. Maybe having to pay a little financial redress to protestors will make those top brass stop pandering to rich people's deep pockets instead of curtailing people's right to peaceably assemble. Whether or not you like the idea of a social contract, the point of having one, as opposed to whatever sort of anarchy is the flavour of the month in Randroid circles these days, is that you don't just throw it out the window when it's convenient, and that's the trouble with what happened here. A lesson to that effect would probably be quite handy, and might remind the people doing the decision-making for "crowd control" and other city-level police projects what their priorities ought to be.
You're a Libertarian, aren't you?