A few years ago (Iam sure this can be Googled, I think it was either LA or Dallas) there was a car chase involving a couple of bandits. The chase got extremely dangerous and the cops called it off. They knew by this time who the culprit was and assumed they would catch up to him later.
Unfortunately, this guy was dangerous, just as they had expected. A few hours after the chase he robbed a convenience store and killed two people because he needed to get rid of witnesses so the cops wouldn't tie it in to the high speed chase.
I would not want to be in the cop's shoes who called off this chase. It has to be extremely hard to deal with.
The moral of this story is "Your damned if you do and your damned if you don't"
You're absolutely correct. The police can't win.