Criminal charges should be a very serious undertaking. If they are planned to be dropped, it's a failure of the justice system to make them in the first place.
Criminal charges, like everything else in this world, is a tool. A tool that police have.
The tool can either be used correctly or incorrectly. I think as long as those officers weren't going to go through with the charges (which it seems to be the case), their use was correct.
