English Riots Part 3 -- How the riots were handled

The riots in England that happened a couple days ago now, but I am going to finish this section: How the riots were handled. This is actually going to be relevant for a few weeks after this post (unless some huge event takes place, like France has a civil war, or Spain defaults, but that is unlikely), so I will continue with this final section.

I am going to focus on what actually happened, and specifically on David Cameron's reaction. Now, I am a tory, so you should take this with a pinch of salt (but not dismiss it... please don't! :D), but it would have been easy to over-react and Labour probably would have.

On Monday there were plenty of voices calling for a curfew, rubber bullets, water cannons, live rounds and, finally, the army. It was a level of disorder we'd frankly never seen before. It looked almost apocalyptic. The speed of events, their geographical distance, the ferocity of the violence and the depth of the depravity shook all of us. Many people became understandably over-excited. History is a good teacher here, but not something many will accept when they are on the firing range, but Labour would probably have overreacted. The party, so wary of being criticised on Law and Order, would have probably had a knee-jerk reaction, and caused mass extreme punishments for the crimes.
A speech was done today in a community centre by Ed Miliband and David Cameron, about the riots. Cameron brought up the idea that it is about crime and"opportunistic thievery", while Ed Miliband brought up the culture, and is requiring an inquiry at the issue's aftermath.

David Cameron brought up some issues about reviewal of things that are interesting such as new police orders to remove facemasks, additional landlord powers, meeting the cost of legitimate compensation claims and increasing the time limit of applications to 42 days; some spending issues such as £10 million on a recovery scheme, to make areas "safe clean and clear"; £20 million high street support scheme, based on helping affected businesses getting back up and running quickly; and other smaller issues.

There were a few strange ones however at first glance, such as dispersal powers to policemen to disperse groups of teenagers (if you don't see the flaw in this, it's a breach, in my opinion, of human rights, to congregate. The tottenham peace rally is an example: it was not previously stated, but it was allowed to go on when it was obvious that there was no threat). I think this may go through, however, there is a second issue he raised.

I think he is "reviewing" until this issue goes away, but this is a hope, and if he pushes this law through, he's lost a lot of respect from me. The issue, without further ado, is monitoring facebook and twitter feeds and other social media when "we know they are plotting violence, disorder, and criminality". The ethics of this, obviously, is wrong. I can make a few comments on facebook, talk about some stuff, get onto the topic of the riots with my frien-- *bang* police storm through the door, riot gear, tear gas, SAS screaming "hands on the ground!". No thanks.

They also talked about the initial riots being handled. Officers have faced a difficult challenge, I will say again, there were hundreds of people in different places all at the same time. And Americans, we don't have a hero policy hardwired into the English brain. When there is 1 policeman, not prepared for the rioting, and then there are 40 rioters, not attacking you, do you run in, get your ass kicked, and become useless, or regroup and tactically handle the problem? I don't understand how you can think that 1 policeman is going to win that skirmish; you must have some kind of superhuman ethos embedded to your belief of what a policeman does.

Surprisingly, Ed Miliband was quite reasonable, and tried to take the conservative high ground with how to react, and definitely was more composed than a couple days ago with the rubber bullet remarks. Of course, this was a great buildup to the comment by Miliband saying :

"Does the prime minister understand why they would think it is not right that he goes ahead with the cuts to police numbers?"

A great and simple remark by Miliband which promotes the assault on Conservatives for making the necessary cuts (I am not criticising him for bringing it up, it's a smart political move). He also dismissed most of Cameron's remarks as "gimmicks". I am wondering whether we have another Blair...
But onto the riots! The riots were done by many people in different places, but I will focus on the riot tactics.

In areas where horses and dogs were utilised, the riots were brought under control quite quickly, which shows that the animals still have a role to play. I cannot find out why they were not employed in a larger area; I am torn between "not enough money" and "trial run". The money is an obvious cry, but you wouldn't instantly send in ALL the cavalry if it could fail horribly.

The rioters were highly mobile, and very concentrated in a small area. In contrast, the police were spread out and not prepared for what was to come. I do not blame them for the first day, and not excessively for the second, because of this major problem of unforeseeable events.

This will updated with any information that is given, so please, tell me some facts (with citation preferably) and I will post it up here. Thank you.