I'm not a fan of this shoot, but I'm not sure your description is accurate. I don't think they were policing riots, they were probably doing more raids, and then dealing with people who were obstructing. The guy who got shot was in the middle of the road being a nuisance.

They handled it terribly in my opinion, but they weren't policing riots, they were removing agitators that were messing with them. Similar, but different.