In many states, including Texas, the law specifies that if a cop wants to arrest you and you run away, you are poised on the ragged edge of your death.
Because the law specifies that if the cop has a reasonable suspicion that you have committed a felony, s/he is authorized by the power of the state to kill you in cold blood.
One more law that needs changing. Flight should not be grounds for official murder.
UPDATE: And, whatever you do, don’t point a banana at one of them. You could be jailed for “felony menacing.” They’ve got a law for everything.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Hm… better not to run, then. Speaking of something related: what is going on in Austin? The front pages on the intertubes show some Wild West scenes there…
Suicide by cop, apparently. Shooting at two closed, government buildings after midnight was no more than a stupid prank. But then shooting at police headquarters, manned 24 hours a day, was suicide. Apparently an illegal immigration protest. No one seems to know anything except no one was hurt but the perp, thanks to a mounted officer corralling two horses who drew his 9mm and hit center mass with one hand.
Well, sounds quite stupid on the side of whoever it was. RIP.
Dick, shooting fleeing felons is regulated these days by by among other things, Tennessee v. Garner 1985, “A police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead”. Then too, in Texas, the Officer must believe “the conduct for which arrest” (using deadly force) “is authorized included the use or attempted use of deadly force;” or “there is a substantial risk that the person to be arrested will cause death or serious bodily injury to another if the arrest is delayed”. And there are other requirements to be fulfilled in the same section which lead up to the above.
Since gang bangers have been known to paint real firearms with the orange tips which are supposed to indicate airsoft or other safe gun shaped objects, and many items such as flutes have been made into firearms, it is probably not a good idea to point items at police in a weapon-like fashion and then expect it to be treated as a very funny joke.
In my journalism experience, judges rarely discount what a police officer says and juries almost never do. So cops know their burden of proof is not heavy. I agree that running is stupid and pointing things at police as a joke is even stupider. But stupid behavior ought not to be a capital crime or grounds for a felony charge. Not so long ago, an Austin officer killed a fleeing suspect, a minority, and was subsequently indicted. We’ll see how the court treats him.
There are all sorts of view points and experiences that lead to them, so I don’t discount yours. On the other hand, I have known small town judges who routinely dismissed tickets, out of hand, when written by officers who had lost credibility. I have had a friend go through a shooting investigation, which was done by an outside agency, and it was not a walk in the park, more like an unending marathon, even with what was an open and shut case with plenty of favorable witnesses. I saw some statistics some years back that said roughly (roughly because of my memory) about 95% of officers involved in violence, shooter, shootee,or both, left law enforcement within a year. I know some that have, some that haven’t, although it took about three years for my friend to get over his incident. It is just not that easy.
If an officer shoots someone because he believes his burden of proof will be light, and his only consideration is that legal aspect, he is either ignorant or stupid, and his ignorance will be soon corrected. Whether you work with people or chemicals, or your idea of fun is “hold my beer and watch this’, while it may always not be fair, ignorance and stupidity quite often carry a high price.
Indeed, they do. Which I like to call evolution-at-work, though the time scales are too long for any of us to really see contemporary evolution in action. I can understand how shooting someone is hard to get over, even when they’re shooting back at you. My experience, of course, is the Vietnam war where, as I have written elsewhere, killing was easy. It was forgetting about it later that was the hard part.