Dick Tracy villains are just heartless, as a rule. You don't get the gunman who lets someone get away because she reminds me of a long-lost girlfriend or the blackmailer who redeems himself at the cost of his own life. They're just bad straight though and they deserve the gruesome deaths they inevitably get.
I'm surprised that Chester Gould treated the broken wrists so lightly myself. Both the good guys and the bad took a lot of damage in the strip and they usually didn't just shrug it off. (Tracy got enough flesh wounds to have whittled him away if they all happened at once.)