On the surface the story appears rather damning for the detective. But other video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U17SxJzv9DM) shows more fully the size of the crowd and seems to indicate that people were throwing snowballs at him after they knew he was a police officer. We don't know what happened before the beginning of any of the existing videos. He obviously would not have been justified in firing his gun in response to any amount of snowball pelting (unless they packed rocks inside the snowballs). But if he identified himself as a police officer to try to stop them and they only continued, what is he supposed to do: draw his weapon to make his point, or undermine the entire department's authority by fleeing from a group of petulant, snowball-throwing assholes? But like I said, we don't know what happened to precipitate the drawing of the gun so we would all be wise not to jump to any conclusions.
