Where do you draw the line? If torture is acceptable in some circumstances, why isn't it in others? If torturing a car thief is ok, why not in a random stop-and-frisk?
Lines have to be drawn frequently. It's okay to use a tazer or even a gun in some circumstances, others, not. With the torture case, we'd have to see that the benefit vastly exceeds the harm, and that reasonable measures were exhausted first. Beating a car thief to save the life of a child strikes me as a case where reasonable measures were exhausted and where the benefit vastly exceeds the harm.