Oakland, Calif.

JEAN QUAN may be the first in many categories — the first Asian-American and first woman to be mayor of Oakland — but she is far from the city’s first chief executive to face off with its police force. While dozens of mayors around the country have had to deal with Occupy movements, only Ms. Quan has seen the initially peaceful protests turn into street violence and even a general strike — a turn almost wholly attributable to the brutality of the city police.

In their zeal to fight back, however, the protesters, many of them white out-of-towners, have left locals unsure of who really has their best interests at heart.

On Oct. 25 the world saw an Oakland police force that blacks have had to deal with for decades — even before the Black Panthers organized to protest the shooting of a black youth in the 1960s, a time when the police were said to be recruited from the South because they knew how to handle African-Americans. In a video watched worldwide, an officer in riot gear fired a tear gas canister at a protester; the victim, an Iraq War veteran, later underwent surgery for his wounds. When some occupiers went to help him, another canister was lobbed at them.

That same night officers allegedly used rubber bullets during an assault on campers in Frank H. Ogawa Plaza. If so, that would violate the department’s rules of engagement. Those rules were adopted in 2003, after the police assaulted antiwar protesters at the Port of Oakland, even injuring some longshoremen who happened to be passing by.