This brought to mind a revelation from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Various bloody incidents happened around the country. The common thread being that the local government/military had things under control but the the central government came and took over things. Everything got worse once they took over and the result was a lot of bloodshed, which is exactly what they wanted.

In all these cities there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on but federal forces come in and suddenly there’s a bunch of protests and fighting and other violence. Everything is backward. There’s supposed to come in when things are bad to help make it better, but they are coming in when things are fine and making everything bad.