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Friday and Saturday are the busiest nights on the street with people heading out for the evening.
England has had two quieter days following four nights of rioting, arson and looting which led to 1,600 arrests across the country, but politicians and police were taking no chances.
Speaking on a visit to a Sony-owned distribution centre in north London which was torched, May said: "We will be sustaining the numbers for a period of time.
"We have had some quieter nights but we are not complacent about that."
The orgy of violence started in London but the trouble soon spread to other major cities, including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham.
London's Metropolitan Police said they arrested 1,144 people, of which 693 have been charged.
In total across England, 796 people have appeared in court, of which 122 were under 18. Courts have been working through the night and two-thirds of those charged have been remanded in custody.
Calls for those convicted to be stripped of their state welfare handouts and booted out of publicly-owned housing were receiving growing popular support.
Wandsworth Council local authority in south London became the first to serve an eviction notice, on a tenant whose son has been charged. It will come into effect if he is convicted.
"For too long we've taken a too soft attitude towards people that loot and pillage their own community," Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC television.
"If you do that you should lose your right to the sort of housing that you've had at subsidised rates."
Police meanwhile said a 68-year-old man died in hospital late Thursday from injuries sustained confronting looters in west London.
Police have arrested a 22-year-old man on suspicion of the murder of Richard Bowes, who was SET upon in the affluent London suburb of Ealing on Monday as he tried to put out a fire started by a gang of youths.
The attack on Bowes "was a brutal incident that resulted in the senseless killing of an innocent man," said Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane of London's Metropolitan Police.
The other victims of the unrest were three young men in Birmingham, Britain's second city, who were run over as they defended local businesses, and a man in Croydon, south London, who was shot dead.
Inquests were due to open Friday into the Birmingham deaths, which saw the three men of South Asian origin mowed down by a car as they stood guard against looters.
As fears of renewed violence remained high, a row escalated between police and politicians as both sides sought to deflect blame for the crisis.
The police have been criticised for their reluctance to crack down hard on the first riot in the north London district of Tottenham on Saturday. Critics say the cautious approach encouraged unrest to spread across the capital and then to other English cities.
But senior officers hit back Friday in rare public attacks on political leaders, who last year introduced funding cuts to police forces across Britain as part of a wider package of austerity measures.
Tim Godwin, the acting head of the Metropolitan Police, pointedly noted that "people will always make comments who weren't there", and defended the policing of the riots in which dozens of officers were injured.
He said in the face of "unprecedented scenes", his force had "some of the best commanders that we have seen in the world ... that showed great restraint as well as great courage."
Cameron and May were on holiday when the riots broke out, and returned early this week to take control, but senior officer Hugh Orde, who represents Britain's police chiefs, said their presence was an "irrelevance".
He also criticised a claim by May that she had ordered police forces across the country to cancel all holiday, saying that she "has no power whatsoever to order the cancellation of police leave."
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England has had two quieter days following four nights of rioting, arson and looting which led to 1,600 arrests across the country, but politicians and police were taking no chances.
Speaking on a visit to a Sony-owned distribution centre in north London which was torched, May said: "We will be sustaining the numbers for a period of time.
"We have had some quieter nights but we are not complacent about that."
The orgy of violence started in London but the trouble soon spread to other major cities, including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham.
London's Metropolitan Police said they arrested 1,144 people, of which 693 have been charged.
In total across England, 796 people have appeared in court, of which 122 were under 18. Courts have been working through the night and two-thirds of those charged have been remanded in custody.
Calls for those convicted to be stripped of their state welfare handouts and booted out of publicly-owned housing were receiving growing popular support.
Wandsworth Council local authority in south London became the first to serve an eviction notice, on a tenant whose son has been charged. It will come into effect if he is convicted.
"For too long we've taken a too soft attitude towards people that loot and pillage their own community," Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC television.
"If you do that you should lose your right to the sort of housing that you've had at subsidised rates."
Police meanwhile said a 68-year-old man died in hospital late Thursday from injuries sustained confronting looters in west London.
Police have arrested a 22-year-old man on suspicion of the murder of Richard Bowes, who was SET upon in the affluent London suburb of Ealing on Monday as he tried to put out a fire started by a gang of youths.
The attack on Bowes "was a brutal incident that resulted in the senseless killing of an innocent man," said Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane of London's Metropolitan Police.
The other victims of the unrest were three young men in Birmingham, Britain's second city, who were run over as they defended local businesses, and a man in Croydon, south London, who was shot dead.
Inquests were due to open Friday into the Birmingham deaths, which saw the three men of South Asian origin mowed down by a car as they stood guard against looters.
As fears of renewed violence remained high, a row escalated between police and politicians as both sides sought to deflect blame for the crisis.
The police have been criticised for their reluctance to crack down hard on the first riot in the north London district of Tottenham on Saturday. Critics say the cautious approach encouraged unrest to spread across the capital and then to other English cities.
But senior officers hit back Friday in rare public attacks on political leaders, who last year introduced funding cuts to police forces across Britain as part of a wider package of austerity measures.
Tim Godwin, the acting head of the Metropolitan Police, pointedly noted that "people will always make comments who weren't there", and defended the policing of the riots in which dozens of officers were injured.
He said in the face of "unprecedented scenes", his force had "some of the best commanders that we have seen in the world ... that showed great restraint as well as great courage."
Cameron and May were on holiday when the riots broke out, and returned early this week to take control, but senior officer Hugh Orde, who represents Britain's police chiefs, said their presence was an "irrelevance".
He also criticised a claim by May that she had ordered police forces across the country to cancel all holiday, saying that she "has no power whatsoever to order the cancellation of police leave."
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