I've seen plenty of videos of police where the people filming are actively escalating tensions. It's usually by yelling though, not filming, but the yelling seems to usually be for the video, rather than anything productive.

As someone who works in emergency services, frankly, "so what?". If you can't tune that out as background noise, you're not going to be able to do your job effectively. Otherwise, what, you have police who can only do their job in ideal circumstances.

Like when I teach EMTs and paramedics, and we cover things like extricating patients from vehicles. "This is great. The vehicle is level, you're in an apparatus bay at a fire station, you have great lighting, no noise, it's not pouring rain..."

More often than not, I see police escalating situations with people of interest and bystanders, rather than the other way around.

I'm assuming you're not speaking about law enforcement since you didn't mention it specifically but I think there's a big difference between a chaotic and interested crowd vs an antagonistic crowd.

Law enforcement are often trying to handle a person they view as dangerous and, if there's a crowd of people around who are vocalizing their displeasure with you, you're going to feel more in danger.

I don't disagree with you about police escalating _violence_ in these situations which is why I specifically said "tensions".

IMO, a bad cop who is completely in the wrong and prone to violence will be more likely to commit violence if their attention is split between their suspect and the antagonistic crowd. Being surrounded by unfriendly people doesn't make people react better than they would have otherwise.

There are plenty of bad cops around. All I'm advocating for is that, if you're recording an altercation you believe unjust, record it and don't become part of it.