GUNSSome Chicago Gunshot Victims Don’t Trust Ambulances
Survivors are choosing to transport themselves to the hospital instead of waiting for emergency services. Experts say the Chicago Fire Department isn’t doing everything it can to improve slow response times.
This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.
In early November, Michael Smith was shot in the thigh after an argument with a close friend in front of his grandmother’s home in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. Smith’s cousin called 911, but 15 minutes later, they were still waiting for an ambulance. “I don’t want to die from bleeding out,” Smith remembers thinking.
So he took matters into his own hands. A friend drove him to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, about 10 minutes away, where he spent a few hours being treated for his wound. Ultimately, it took the ambulance about half an hour to arrive at his grandmother’s house, Smith’s cousin told him. Had they not traveled to West Suburban themselves, Smith said, “I probably would have died.”
Chicagoans have heard this story over and over again: when someone gets shot, ambulances don’t always arrive quickly, and victims don’t always survive. As a result, survivors of gun violence say they don’t trust the city’s Emergency Medical Services. To avoid the risk that a delayed transport could cause an avoidable loss, many gunshot victims are getting rides from friends or driving themselves to a nearby hospital, forgoing transportation in an ambulance for a chance to reach an emergency room on time.
People like Smith experience only the end result of a systemic problem: After a shooting, the ambulance takes a long time to reach the crime scene. But what they don’t see is that, beneath the surface of the Chicago Fire Department’s worsening response times, the department is also failing to keep track of this information. Although Chicago’s Office of the Inspector General has called for the Fire Department to improve its data collection every year since 2021, more information has been missing from its records.
Before the city can get more ambulances to respond on time, experts say, it must first monitor the problem more thoroughly. “If you have that data to support your needs and your requests, it might make it easier for the authority of jurisdiction when requesting future needs,” said Ken Holland, a senior specialist with the National Fire Protection Association, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that sets safety standards.
