It's always amusing to see people bashing the police (or otherwise) for failure to act, or acting too much.
The problem with this is that hindsight is always so much easier. You have all the time in the world to nitpick small little details which people at the time may have missed. To sit behind your desk, searching for other such instances, and drawing parallels which may indeed be correct, but not necessarily applicable.
Look at governments, look at agencies. There is so much pressure to do what is 'right' while in reality situations are often not so binary in; black and white. But rather a much more complex different shades of grey. Facing both political and public backlash following split moment decisions with limited information available.
Ask yourself what you would have done, would you have ran in? Would you have risked your life? It's in everyone's nature to do or say what is deemed right in the eye of the public, and extensive research has gone into such behaviour. The reality is that many act different than they say. Sure, if you assume that government workers should be upheld to a higher standard and more committed to protect and serve than others, where does this logic end? When does this logic override the right to live and protect oneself? There is no social contract committing one person to give their own live for another.
The behavior of the officers, whether or not they made any attempts, is very much understandable. Just like it understandable for the young girls to panic and attempt to flee following their infraction. As such it is not really a question of right and wrong, but more about the interplay of circumstance and understanding the (ir)rational behind decisions.
Would have and should have scenario's for the most part are endless biased discussions, culminating in nothing more than endless discussions in absence of clear evidence and information.
