By Schuyler Kropf
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
Copyright 2007 The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
All Rights Reserved
Jason Hammond knows when he responds to a gunshot call in Charleston, chances are a retaliation shooting is already being planned.
That’s been the pattern in these violent times: a stabbing followed by a shooting, a shooting followed by more guns.
As a paramedic crew chief with Charleston County EMS, Hammond has responded to more gunshot calls than just about anyone in recent times. Too often, the scenes repeat themselves: a young male victim lying in a growing pool of blood. Wads of money and tiny bags of drugs litter the ground or tumble from hiding spots in clothing. A crowd mills about. Nobody saw anything.
Hammond can’t take sides. There’s no time to debate the waste of it all. He’s emotionally disconnected, mechanically focused. It’s the only way he can do his job whether the victim is a four-year-old girl hit by a stray bullet or a teen-aged boy who, seconds before, clutched a pistol.
Treatment becomes automatic. “Open their airway; stop the bleeding!” the voice inside his head commands. Ignore who this person is. Solve the problem.
If he’s successful, Hammond’s time with a victim is over in minutes when he hands off his patients to doctors at the hospital.
Hammond doesn’t remember their faces, only the places that gunshot calls send him: an alley, intersection, a street corner. Afterwards, he’ll decompress.
America’s murder rate has gone down in recent decades, but lost to most people is one reason why: the increased proficiency of EMS services and crew members like Hammond.