My View

August 2006

My View is a periodic feature telling a story from the perspective of a CeaseFire staff member, client, or partner. In this first installment, Elena Quintana shares an essay she wrote describing one day in her role as the CeaseFire coordinator of a hospital emergency room violence intervention initiative.

CeaseFire and the Advocate Christ Medical Center Emergency Room Initiative

By Elena Quintana, Ph.D., Director of Evaluation, The Chicago Project for Violence Prevention/CeaseFire

I manage a violence intervention partnership between CeaseFire and Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. Basically, it is a coordinated effort to prevent retaliatory or escalating violence after a victim, usually from gunfire, is brought into the hospital's emergency room. Most of the responses are to gang shootings in Roseland and other communities on Chicago's far South Side.

When someone gets shot, or sometimes beaten or stabbed, and the hospital chaplains or trauma team members believe there is potential for retaliation, they call me. Sometimes they call me in the middle of a meeting, or during dinner, but often I'm called late at night. It is not uncommon to be called two or three times a day. I was called six times in the last 24 hours. It's July, and this is the killing season.

Harrowing stories

The stories I hear on the other end are harrowing: 20 people beat a 19-year-old so severely that he lost every tooth; his intestines were exposed. A 35-year-old gang leader was shot in the head. Throngs of people were flooding the emergency room asking to view the body. It was unclear how many were armed. A 28-year-old man was shot just months after being released from prison. His three brothers sat in the waiting room discussing how they were going to “go take care of business.” A young pregnant woman sat in the car with her boyfriend. She was shot in the legs by the bullets that passed through his body and into hers. Her boyfriend died at the scene.

Each of these incidents happened on Chicago's South Side. Crises such as these are generally seen as symptoms of a blighted community that will be addressed by an able trauma team or the morticians who bury the victims. Also involved are the law enforcement and criminal justice personnel who investigate, prosecute, and jail those involved. The general public reads about these events in the papers, or sees them on the news, terrified that the violence could move into their neighborhood or otherwise affect them or their loved ones. Many people are able to remain far removed from these sad, destructive, criminal situations.

Unfortunately, the typical medical or criminal justice interventions do not usually interrupt the cycle of illegal and violent activity. Often the trauma surgeon who sews up a victim one month is sewing him up again three months later. The young man who is shot on the corner for selling drugs in someone else's drug territory might later be prosecuted for shooting back. Those that shoot others, even if sent to prison, are only carried further and further away from any hope of ever entering the mainstream again. Thousands of violent offenders are released from prison every year. Even when they are dedicated to changing their lives, the mark of a prison record against them is enough to drive them right back into the illegal activities that led them to violence in the first place.

Late night calls

For this, I am called late at night, and I am glad for it. When I am awakened, and I hear that there is a violent incident that has occurred at a specific address, I am able to access a list of 25 or 30 people who may be able to touch those involved in a significant and positive way. I listen closely for the location, the story of what happened, and for other details, such as gang tattoos, that may offer clues about the nature of the conflict. I use geographic clues to assess the best person who may be able to convince the family and friends of the victim to change their thinking; to inject a positive solution into a chaotic and tragic situation.

Charles Mack and community outreach efforts

I depend most on Charles Mack. Charles is the main person who gets out of bed and drives to the hospital. Charles is from the Roseland neighborhood. He is no stranger to gangs and violence. He's had plenty of contact with violence in his community and through family members who have been in many of the same predicaments as the victims of gunfire he meets several times weekly. He greets all matter of distraught, concerned, and sometimes menacing friends and family members of the injured. He talks directly to the victims to assess their interest in changing their lives. For those who are interested, he goes to court, gets them back in school, tries to get them employment, and gives them support and guidance.

After a shooting, most victims are not ready to immediately change their lives. Others have lost their lives, and for their loved ones, this is when the thirst for vengeance is often greatest. It takes a real expert to maneuver through the street organizations, and their various idiosyncratic members and politics, to get to the business of talking thugs out of retaliation.

Theodore* helped me last night. There were three killings and two other shootings in Roseland, all within a few hours of each other. When I heard the addresses and thought of the conflicts in the area, I went through my mental rolodex. I knew I could count on Theodore. At one time he was a higher-up in a gang of that community. He had long since left the life and had committed himself to restoring his community, to free it from gangs and violence. Unfortunately, his transformation did not happen in time to save his family. He has lost one son to gang violence, and another to prison. Theodore volunteered to help in Roseland. Although he is not paid to work there, he is effective and does what he can with the time that he has. I try not to call on him too much, but there is so much to be done that it's difficult to keep from calling him when I think he can help. I rely on many people like Theodore who will take the time to use their expertise in certain communities to resolve conflicts that have resulted in injury.

Funerals

Today six of our outreach staff went to two different funerals of people who had been sent to Christ Hospital . One was dead at the scene, but pronounced officially at the hospital. The other lingered in a vegetative state for a few days before finally succumbing to his head and chest wounds. The first was a shot-caller for the largest gang in Illinois. The other was a victim of an altercation with a neighbor over pit bulls. The man was killed in front of his 8-year-old stepdaughter. He was part of a large family with vengeance in mind against a known but elusive attacker. In each case Charles Mack was the first representative from CeaseFire on the scene to try to inject some calm and some reason into an escalating situation. He was able to make key relationships with family members who could give him a sense of any trouble brewing in the coming days. In each case, Charles was able to get specific information that helped our community workers follow up with key individuals in a timely manner to ensure that calmer heads would prevail. Today there was no violence at either funeral, nor has there been any other retaliation related to these events. It will take dedicated attention to the families and communities to be sure that the situations remain nonviolent.

Most violent police beats

For the last year, Roseland has been home to the most violent police beats in Chicago. This rise in killings in Roseland coincides with a lack of funding for CeaseFire -– funding for the program in Roseland ended at the end of June 2005. Advocate Christ Hospital got some funds together to carry a couple of the outreach staff there until December. These staff then went to the hospital to see victims from other neighborhoods too -- Auburn-Gresham, Englewood, and Marquette Park, among them. This year, starting in August, a seed effort for CeaseFire will start again in Roseland. There is not, however, money for the hospital initiative.

The collaboration between Advocate Christ Medical Center and CeaseFire has allowed for rapid response to the highest risk people and situations in well over 100 different violent events. Christ Hospital has allowed their patients to get another dimension of care. This care follows the patients back into the most dangerous circumstances after they are released from the hospital and return to their communities. Negotiations have been held among gang members, safety has been promised, families have been helped to move, and lives have been saved.

A chance to save lives

When the phone rings, it is an opportunity. Crisis is dangerous, but it also presents a chance to change a life. It fills me with motivation and gratitude when I'm able to call the right person, who is able to fix a situation that seemed unfixable, and who would not have been afforded that chance had this collaboration not existed. Sometimes we reach people when they are at their most vulnerable. Sometimes they hear us. Many times their families are grateful that someone is willing to get involved in a situation and help a loved one who seems to have spun out of control. Helping to get these people back on some sort of a safe track is the key to keeping them alive.

It is my sincere hope that I will be able to continue this important work. Responding to hospital calls is the most efficient work done by CeaseFire, because it involves reaching the highest-risk people when they are motivated -- by injury and fear -- to rethink their path. I thank Advocate Christ Medical Center staff for making this collaboration an integrated part of their protocol. Together we work as part of a longer-term solution that extends into the future, and hopefully will lead to generational norm change. It is my goal for the grandchildren of these victims to have the luxury of feeling far removed from awful stories on the evening news. But this vast change only occurs with everyone coming together, and maintaining focus on pulling our most vulnerable, including victims of violent crime and their perpetrators, back into the fold of humanity.

*Theodore's name has been changed to protect his identity.