Guns are not there to serve warnings. Guns are not there to wound people in hopes that they slow down. If the person is not an imminent threat then they should not even be threatened with a gun.
Basically one of the larger male cops should have tackled him and they could have gone Rodney King on him -- but they would have had a horrible lawsuit for that too (he was probably high on PCP like King).
I would never want to be a cop, and I know there are a lot of cop haters even here on FR, but it's hard to imagine a half-way decent world that doesn't have them. (Unless you are a 14 year old and believe in things like anarcho-libertarianism, or a 45 year old who hasn't grown up).
Can’t shoot in the air, bullets land somewhere.