My bad, thought he meant 'tibia' which is like the lower leg part, shinbone area.
I guess she did the right thing then shooting at the body as she was trained?
Unlike in the movies, being accurate with a handgun is hard. That's when you're just sitting at the range, taking your time, thinking about your breathing, taking shots at a piece of paper. In a violent confrontation your accuracy is going to go WAY WAY down most of the time, especially if you're moving, the target is moving, you've got massive adrenaline going on, you're out of breath, it's dark or the sun is in your eyes, etc..
People are always trained to shoot "center mass" in those situations. Center mass (torso) is the largest target, it's the part that if you hit it you are most likely to stop the threat.
Getting fancy/stupid and trying to take a skill shot on a target's leg has a lot of potentially negative consequences. First is that you miss and the threat is not stopped. Second is that you miss and your bullet goes on to hit something you didn't intend, like an innocent person. Third, you might hit the target but not stop the target.
There's another HUGE reason why police don't shoot limbs. Shooting a person is using very potentially deadly force, period. Shooting at a limb might still kill a person, or you could try to shoot a limb but hit a more critical part of their body and kill them. So anyway, the reason deadly force is justified is because the officer fears for the life or limb of themself or another person. So in that situation there is no acceptable course of action other than to try to stop the threat completely as soon as possible. If you're not justified in using deadly force then you're not justified in pulling the trigger at all.
And that's where shooting a leg comes in. In what situation would you shoot at a leg? The right answer is never, but let's say it was a thing. The time to shoot a leg is when there is NOT an imminent threat. Shooting a leg is using a deadly weapon in a hopefully less-lethal way. So let's say you are taking shots at legs, well you might hit that big-*** artery running through the leg and the person might bleed out in a minute or so. So you tried using your gun in non-lethal way but ended up killing a person anyway when deadly force was not justified.
The bottom line here is there would be massive liability issues for police if they shot at legs. First, it implies deadly force is not justified. Second, if the situation does justify the use of deadly force, but the office shot at a leg instead and the threat ended up killing an innocent person because the leg-shot didn't stop them, the police department might get sued by the innocent victim.
Anyway, cops don't shoot at limbs.
