Lessons can always be learned!
Attempting to move that plane with the pilot in it would have been a wayyyy less good choice compared to what the police succeeded in doing. Can you imaging taking the time to find the rope or tow strap, hook it to a structure you do not understand, and then onto a hard point on your patrol car that you also do not understand, to find the as you pulled, the plane rolled a bit, the pilot's arm flopped out, and got caught, so you stopped dragging it, or it hooked on the track and wouldn't move, and maybe what you'd hooked too broke off? All of that did not work, took time, and prevented the direct rescue of the pilot in the mean time - then the train hits and kills the patient. The police would have been in for massive criticism then! As it was, it had a lot of risk to both pilot and police officer. The risk went down for the pilot as it went up for the police officer - but the police officer never increased the risk to the pilot as a patient.
I have had times when I could not save a person, I tried. I did what I was trained to do, it did not work. patient died, I did not. I did my job. I've had times when I refused to start a zero zero in snow night rescue, because I knew that the very remote chance we could find them was offset by immense risk to our team, and the slight risk that finding the patients could have been by running them over with the airboat. But the lesson learned was that we needed FLIR, then the Chief let me buy one - we just needed the lesson!
From time to time on scene I'd shout "Freeze". That means that everyone has to stop, while we consider something safety related which a firefighter has noticed. The minute I witnessed someone connecting a tow anything to that airplane with someone in it, I would have yelled freeze for sure!