The police, as seen by them being excluded from this pension reform, are a force of oppression against these demonstrators.

Police in Europe has been started as professional paid wage slaves and they stayed the same till now. Somewhere along the way like-minded people like the privileges they got with becoming riot police (aka beating up leftists) and increasingly flocked into these positions.

The argument of „protect and serve“ can be at most be done for the classic patrol cop who is a first responder. Riot police is nothing else than a paid private army to protect the state from its citizens.