*GTA 4 SPOILERS* Am I playing this wrong??

Spoilers ahead.  If you haven't played Three Leaf Clover then turn back now...

So I've been playing GTA4 like just about every person on the planet the last week.   Now I've been playing this with the angle that I won't kill any innocent bystanders/pedestrians and cops randomly just for the hell of it.    It's a personal decision really and doesn't detract from the game at all so it's worked for most of the missions I've done till now (I've jumped from 2nd story of buildings on some instances in order to avoid the cops altogether in one particular mission) and it actually added to the game experience for me..

However, along comes Three Leaf Clover...  Now the concept of the mission and the setup are great.   The gunfights are epic and the mad dash through Algonquin on foot is fantastic.   I was just mildly put off that in a sandbox game such as this, I was put on such a rigid path through and forced to kill so many cops in order to succeed.  I mean there are other missions where you get the decision to let the target live and that's the decision I usually take when confronted with the choice, so why not here...

This is a game that's all about options(as most sandbox games are..), I'm forced to wonder why didn't Rockstar offer an option to try and dodge the cops and use an alternate route out of the bank instead of going through the shooting spree.   I think that adding a non-violent(or at least less violent path) through the city could've had pretty much the same dramatic effect without the insanely high police bodycount.

So am I the only one that is playing Niko as a mercenary with a conscience?