As the National Guard and then the Marines descended in armored trucks on Los Angeles , the anti-ICE demonstrations began to turn increasingly more fiery, chaotic, and confrontational with nighttime curfews in effect and hundreds arrested.

Meanwhile, in Baltimore, protesters have voiced the same outrage over the stepped-up raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the demonstrations have been peaceful and the atmosphere collaborative.

That’s intentional, according to both demonstration organizers and police in Baltimore, a city that is no stranger to unrest that turns destructive.

“We knew we could have done better after Freddie Gray,” Police Commissioner Richard Worley said. “I think that’s that goes for us and the communities. We don’t want to repeat that.”

In 2015, the death of Gray in police custody triggered a series of demonstrations that grew and intensified, culminating in unrest on the day of his funeral in which buildings and cars were torched, shopkeepers beaten, and stores and pharmacies looted.

In recent years, in Baltimore and elsewhere, there have been efforts and scholarship on how cities can best handle demonstrations and how organizers can most successfully promote their cause.

Among “the most consistent findings,” for example, is how non-violent tactics are more effective than violent ones, said Lisa Mueller, an associate professor of political science at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of the book, “The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists.”

But, she noted, it depends on who is viewed as responsible for any violence that breaks out.

In Los Angeles, for example, Trump has said he sent in the military to quell the “anarchy” and the city would be “on fire” without them. State and local officials, though, said deploying troops to the city escalated tensions and violence.

“If protesters fire the first shot, or more likely throw the first rock, this tends to sour the public on them and set them back,” Mueller said.

But the use of force against protesters can backfire, she said. “There’s evidence that repression can help the protesters’ cause because it raises sympathy for them.

During these fractious times, officials are contending not just with anti-ICE sentiments but a range of protests against Trump and his administration’s actions, from the “Tesla Takedowns” when Elon Musk was advising Trump and enacting sweeping budget and staff cuts, to national efforts like Saturday’s “No Kings” demonstrations .

Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement Friday that state agencies have been monitoring the upcoming rallies and coordinating with community leaders and law enforcement to maintain public safety.

“Over the weekend, thousands of Marylanders will gather to exercise their guaranteed and hard-fought-for First Amendment freedoms,” Moore said. “We are a state that will protect the rights of the people, and also uphold the law.”

In Baltimore, the immigrant rights organization CASA worked with police, elected officials and community groups in planning protests against recent ICE raids here , said Crisaly De Los Santos, the group’s Baltimore and Central Maryland director.

“We wanted to reflect strength, unity and the refusal to be silenced,” De Los Santos said. “We coordinated with the community. We had elected officials marching with us. That was powerful.”

When they can, Worley said, police have sought to meet in advance with organizers of protests on logistics, such as whether officers will need to temporarily block streets for marchers, and to make sure that things don’t get out of hand.

“We basically explain, you can peacefully protest… but you can’t destroy property and you can’t commit assault,” Worley said. “That doesn’t mean you can’t yell and scream because that’s your right, but we want everybody to have their protest, have their say and then everybody gets to go home safely.”

Worley, then chief of patrol, was charged with developing the department’s deployment plans for the protests that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis after an officer knelt on his neck. Worley noted the department was singled out for praise in a New York Times article about the after-action reports various cities conducted on how they handled the protests.

“ Only the police department in Baltimore was credited with handling protests relatively well,” the article said. “The department deployed officers in ordinary uniforms and encouraged them ‘to calmly engage in discussion’ with protesters, the report said.”

Baltimore’s report was done by the independent team that monitors the city’s compliance with a federal consent decree mandating a sweeping overhaul of its policing. Among the mandates in the decree that the department has successfully completed is how it handles First Amendment-protected activities such as protests.

The monitoring team’s report on the George Floyd protests in Baltimore lauded both the police and the community for the largely peaceful demonstrations. “First, protest leaders were well-organized, committed to non-violence, and willing to share information” with police, the report said. “Second, BPD commanders lowered the temperature and avoided provocation by permitting the protests to proceed unimpeded; refraining from unnecessary arrests for minor infractions.”

Worley noted that when someone in the crowd of one protest threw something at police, other demonstrators chased down the alleged culprit and delivered him to the police.

Mueller said it’s hard to know if the current protests against ICE will spread or become more violent. For now, Los Angeles, with its proximity to the southern border and the high percentage of immigrants, remains the epicenter, with “the usual suspect cities, the blue cities” more recently having protests of their own.

The movement would grow more powerful should the protests expand beyond into more unexpected locales, she said.

“If protests were to start erupting in rural Iowa,” she said, “it would suggest the coalition against Trump is broader than it seemed.”

Among those who are watching how the protests develop is the actor and Buddhist priest Peter Coyote. In a Substack that has been making the social media rounds, he urged anti-ICE demonstrators to avoid damaging their own cause. Coyote, who noted that he once taught a class on the “theater of protest, advised demonstrators to exercise discipline, go home at night when it’s hard to tell who’s who, and not to be baited into destructive, violent acts that can be used in “Republican campaign videos.”

“A protest is an invitation to a better world,” Coyote said. “It’s a ceremony.”

In Baltimore, Worley said he hopes any further anti-ICE protests will remain as calm as they’ve been so far and avoid problems that may attract federal attention and a deployment of the National Guard. He’d rather keep the response local.

“The police department has become very good with protests,” Worley said, “We have handled a lot of them.”