They shouldn’t have escalated, but they were potentially within their rights to. For all they knew they’d surrounded their knife robbery suspect.
Even if they had, what's the downside to proceeding exactly as I described above? The suspect might live despite a failure to comply? They might not get to use enough force that day? Block her in, stand back, spike the tires. Wait for backup. She's pregnant, she'll need to pee in 10 minutes.
they were acting within their authority
And this is one of the myriad reasons that police reform is needed.
Edit: I realized my comment that I make reference to here was not in reply to you so you didn't see it. Here it is.