Even with poor English, policias is close enough to police to be intelligible either way, I feel. I've had 'polizei' shouted at me and the non-German-speakers with me understood it well enough to stand still for the Stasi(!).

My feelings on this one are roughly the same as sesquipedality's. I grew up around guns, which is unusual in Britain, and I know that the first thing to understand is that if someone is pointing a gun at you, they intend to use it if provoked. You don't run from armed men, whether they're criminals or police. It turns a possibility into a near-certainty, whatever their motive for shooting might be.