Police on Sky news admitted UK laws tie them up in knots.

You mean Sky manipulated, edited and spun what they said until it looked like the fascist message they wanted.

In fact the police have been saying all along that the situation was intrinsically beyond what they were capable of handling with the resources they had. The law allowed them to take much more extreme measures - like water cannon - but they judged it wouldn't do any good.

It is VERY unfair to judge the ordinary coppers thrown into the front line of these disturbances as if they were the above-the-law elite hit squads who murdered Duggan and de Menezes, or the commanders above them with their sleazy links to Murdoch.