Enforcing the Law by Breaking the Law?!

The story is that this guy led the Birmingham, AL police (and few other depts.) on a chase, endangering the lives of many people in a wide area. No doubt the police did their job and chased the criminal until they caught him. So far so good - he is a dangerous criminal and must be stopped. That's why we have police force, gladly pay for it, and proudly support it.

The second part of this story, which can't seem to find common sense reception in people's minds is that when finally the police ran the criminal off the road and he was thrown out of his van and laying motionless and obviously unconscious on the ground, all present officers started beating the unconscious body for about 10 seconds.
Now, I'll admit that I felt some primal satisfaction that the criminal got to suffer a violent apprehension and if he died while being thrown out of the van or got shot by an officer trying to stop him, I'd probably say that he deserved it, but I also think that beating him while unconscious would have been more appropriate if not the police but a lawless street gang was chasing and caught him.

But what I think does not matter here. What matters is what the Law says. In different commentaries of this story a lot of people are angry with the Birmingham, AL police chief for firing the officers who took part in the beating. I understand the anger, after all those police officers risked their lives and one almost got killed during the chase. What no one of those folks is saying is how exactly the police chief should handle something like this - he is in charge of enforcing the Law and those officers broke the Law. At least for now righteous anger does not legally justify breaking the Law by anyone, let alone by a Law enforcement officer.

For those who are angry about the fired officers - they were not fired for being mean to the criminal, they were fired for breaking the Law. Why is this so difficult to understand for so many people?! The only conclusion I came to is this one:

the years of intentional politicising of the public opinion make a lot of people see the situation as cops being unjustly fired for beating a black criminal, who is being helped by slick lawyers and out of control human rights activists.

Some people say things like "in other countries" the cops would have shot him dead right away. I agree. Also, in other countries, where there is no Law and professional police training to get in the way of rightfull anger, the cops could have decapitate him on the spot, impale his body, rape his wife, kill the rest of his family and burn his house to the ground, if they felt like it...

Thank God The United States of America is NOT one of those countries.