Not arguing just sharing my opinion. It might change yours it might not idk just wanna give you some things you might not have considered

Shooting in the leg or arms for the most part if very unrealistic. Handguns are a lot harder to aim than you might think. Hitting a small target thats not moving on the range is pretty hard. Now imagine having to hit a small moving target while moving and while being under an insane amount of stress. Their hands are probably shaking and it just gets to a point where it's much more likely they are going to miss than hit which is only going to escalate the situation. Most of the time cops miss while aiming for the chest.

Now if they hit the leg there's still a high chance the suspect will bleed out within seconds. Look up a diagram of all the arteries in the legs. Fun fact the largest artery in the body is in the leg. Even if you miss one of the arteries with the round you still have bones. Hitting a bone would cause it to shatter and a bunch of sharp bone fragments would go flying around everywhere in the leg which can also puncture arteries. Then the bullet also shatters and breaks off into sharp pieces that can also hit your arteries. And it also harder for doctors to treat arterial bleeds. There's an argument to be made that shooting in the leg can be more dangerous for the suspect.

Now what happens if they miss the shot is the bullets are going to ricochet off the ground and potentially hit someone else or over penetrate the leg and hit someone or break off into shrapnel and again hit someone else. And a gun shot is likely to make the suspect even more aggressive and start running full force at the cops or maybe at a bystander. It's also possible he would grab a hostage and now they're in a much worse scenario than they were before because they tried to make a hollywood film like shot.

And also people can be extremely deadly even after getting hit with more than a dozen rounds. Just last month a guy in chicago was stabbing a cop with a big knife and he got tased twice and got shot 21 times before he stopped attacking (on video) And 2 months ago another cop had to shoot like 9 times to the chest for the guy to finally collapse and stop swinging his knife at her.

When you factor in drugs or adrenaline or even both, sometimes people don't stop attacking until their body gives out and it becomes physcially impossible for them to stand on their feet.

The cops are just trying to eliminate the threat as fast as possible to protect themselves and everyone else around. You don't want to give a maniac on the street the chance to endanger everyone else life because you wanted to wound them as little as possible. When someone puts other people's life in danger you can not expect cops to give them the benefit of the doubt. They care much more about preventing someone else from getting hurt than they do trying to subdue a maniac in the least harmful way possible.

There's plenty videos I could link you on youtube of cops not shootimg because they didn't want to kill/hurt the suspect and it only put everyone in a much worse situation.

And also let's be realistic, you threaten people with a knife you give up your right to live. No good cop is going to put a maniac like that's life before their own or before the life of a bystander. Cops want to miss as little shots as possible to prevent collateral damage.

You don't have to agree with what I'm saying, but it's something you might not have considered.