Oh, dear, oh dear... Officers Lozoya, Tennis... I do not believe either of you tried at all.
Now, with that said, he was wielding a knife, and was effectively a dangerous lunatic at large. But it just seems so brazen to not even try to follow procedure and contain the situation. It's as if they just skimmed down the checklist until they reached the last, last, last resorts and went in for the kill. Of course, sometimes procedure doesn't work, and the policemen have to shoot the maniac down to protect themselves and others, but the point is that they didn't even bother with anything else. Despite there apparently being procedures for it. At some point, it goes beyond being jumpy and just being uninterested in any solution but the violent ones.
The department and the city trying to wait it out is another big failure in this. Some action, some explanation, and a bit less of those determinedly tight lips would've helped. I'd say it's fair to assume that they hoped it'll all blow over by itself (You know, black, mental case, drug abuse, probably right at the bottom score in the 'who is likely to care?' table), and did their damndest to help it do so.
It's been interesting trying to explain the situation in Charlotte to my kids. As white, reasonably middle-class children, police probably ARE a safe haven for them. I don't want to teach them to inherently mistrust the police, but at the same time I'm not going to sugarcoat it. My daughter was horrified that the police would shoot someone who wasn't actively trying to hurt someone.
Good call, I say. As a decent rule of thumb to teach, most policemen are fine, but some aren't. It's impossible to know which is which, but chances are that they're the good guys. Even so, tell them to do precisely as the rozzers say, on the off-chance they're the rotten ones and are looking for a reason to cause some hurt. Inherent mistrust against the entire police corps as a concept is a good thing to avoid, but a certain suspicion against individual officers might be a healthy habit to get. It might help to say that they're people, after all, and most people are good people, but some are very bad people indeed.
It's a really rotten life-lesson to teach, but the fact is that their background does mean they're safer around the rozzers. Even so, politeness and caution (which is honestly useful in most situations anyway, come to think of it).