The Glenville riot in Cleveland had armed snipers shooting from upper storey windows. It took a National Guard M60 tank at a key intersection to restore order. I don’t know just how “civilized” you think that might be.
Did it end the riot? If so, that was probably the civilized choice.
In the summer of 1966 I was part of a church project to go in-town to the Hough “ghetto” (that’s what it was called then) to set up children’s playgrounds on abandoned lots where the “tenements” had been torn down. When the Hough riot broke out, we were asked to stay there (with protection) to try to keep things calm. I will never forget the black women who came down to the street and told us that if trouble was heading our way, come up to that apartment (as they pointed it out) and they would hide us. They were wonderful people.
The protection ended up as military jeeps with 50-cal machine guns.
Two years later (summer,1968) I was working as the only night man in a gas station near downtown Cleveland to earn money for university (Michigan... lost a lot of Ohio friends by doing that!). Selling gas in cans had been banned (for obvious reasons). One night during those riots, some “folks” came in and demanded that I fill some emergency cans with gasoline. I (22 years old) told them I could not. They then got a bit threatening and I was not too sure if I would make it through the night.
Fortunately, I had been letting Cleveland cops sleep around the side of the gas station, and they made the mistake of waking the cop who was back there up. That is probably why I am still alive.
Hough was more-or-less spontaneous. Glenville was planned.