In this video I think it's demonstrated incredibly powerfully what importance needs to be placed upon anti-horse tools.
The horses do the bulk of the work in creating space that allows the police line to tighten the noose here. Without them they never would have controlled these crowds with people on multiple sides of them. They could not have maintained control.
There must be simply and effective methods to spook these horses without causing a danger to them. Something that could be deployed that would make the riders tell their superiors "we can't deploy because the horses would be spooked by x".
Anyway. What are other people's thoughts here? Obviously this protest was unprepared for a fight (although several police have been hospitalised). What could small groups of 1-5 have done in the wider engagement to make things go differently?
Ok, here are my thoughts. So the primary purposes of horses is twofold.
Those two tactics need to be discussed separately. Firstly to counter a charge. Horses will seldom charge directly through a densley packed mass of people, especially if some have polearms, such as flagpoles. The issue is that requires a vast amount of discipline. While this tactic might have utility, it is not the best because it requires a lot of discipline your group of protesters likely doesn't have.
Using molotov cocktail, or create a temporary barricade seems like the best options to me, as these would break any charge by horses.
As for the second issue, that is a situation in which you are dancing with horses at much closer quarters, so the molotov cocktail world be highly impractical and dangerous. Those cops up on there horses as they force people around might be vulnerable though, as they don't have shields and seem to be to be along for a brick to the face. Failing that, again the flagpoles could be used to try and dismount the pigs.
Ok, finally, I saw people suggesting this, but don't go around trying to grab the reins of a fast moving horse, unless you want to get trampled.
I might be wrong, please do give me feedback
Just hire some swiss pikemen lol