Honestly if people make good choices all the time we would be living in a heaven not this world, police are suppose to as you say expect civilians to make bad choices, sometimes willingly and other times in distress, I have seen so many videos where police stop someone and they are agitated and with patience and de-escalation the person who is stopped/aggressive/agitated ended up being calm and hug it out with police.
One think I believe may have played a role, which you can correct me is that impact of pepper spray, i heard it hurts a lot and make your eyes itchy where you have to itch, he was blasted by spray many times so Its safe to assume he must've been in a lot of stress with around 7 cops on top of him while trying to itch or deal with the effect of spray. The video is indeed a hard to watch just like that women Renee, and how her car just crashed into the pole, I think she was hit in the head and probably have died on spot but still there was a doctor in crowd who wanted to help but was stopped, its insane how things can go from 0 to 100.
The issue here is, the things actually started by a Federal Agent, he went out of his way to push a woman on the floor, the woman was not even near him, and he took a deliberate step and forced her down. Pretti was with another woman prior to this, and then turn his attention to the woman that being push, that trigger the whole thing.
At 0:54
Notice the agent in a yellow khaki beanie and the woman in a white/cream coat and black beanie, they were more than an arm's length. In the next 2 second, at 0:56, the agent gain on the woman and push her for whatever reason
Bear in mind, recording LEO aside, I would say not even in the agent's personal space is not a crime, which means the agent, by pushing her, that's assault. That would be a recorded offence or you can literally sue the department of excessive force being used (talk about Irony when you compare to what happened in the next minute.)
Then Pretti go between the agent and the woman, at 0:57 with his left hand stretched out.
And this was when Prepper Spray was used.
The problem is, the agent was not targeting him before, and that's a very obvious de-escalation gesture; it's not like Pretti goes between the woman and the agent and push or otherwise phyiscally assault the agent, which means the use of Prepper Speay on Pretti is questionable at least. Because I don't see aggression from both Pretti and the woman.
It all culiminated at 1:24 this happened
You can clearly see Pretti's legs and his behind; he is on all 4, which means his face and body are toward the floor, not toward the agent. Bear in mind, this is at a point when the agent in the grey coat already removed Pretti's firearm, and the general rules of Firearm threat is threat's downrange, which is where your body and face were facing, because at this position, even if Pretti can draw his gun, the only way he can shoot is on the floor. All the agents at this point are either parallel to him or uprange (behind him) and you can't say he is a threat of general public either, because again, his downrange direction is the floor.
So unless the agents in this case cannot tell the front from the back of a person (which you would know for sure as it's missing a face) that's NOT a threat EVEN if he is armed, because that is the textbook position to disarm a person, that's the ultimate goal when you try to disarm a person, had his face and body facing the floor, NOT YOU. This is greater than ALL risk factors to consider of whether he is unstable or seems like he was fighting the agent, because at this point, the agent is already in control.