Good morning, Chicago.
One morning last month, Anthony Douglas stood at the front of a classroom at Englewood STEM High School and asked a group of boys how long they thought it took for someone to die from blood loss.
One guessed two minutes. Another guessed five.
“You’re all wrong,” Douglas said. “You get hit in the right spot, you can bleed out in seconds.”
Such are the lessons taught to some teenagers in Chicago, a city just beginning another summer and preparing to grapple with the violence it can bring.
Douglas moved on to the names of the major arteries and how to pressure and pack a wound, hoping to equip the boys with some knowledge of how to respond should somebody be shot where they were standing.
Along with city leaders and public safety advocates, Douglas and his colleagues at the University of Chicago trauma center have spent months preparing. And this summer will bring extra challenges as the city prepares to welcome waves of tourists, delegates and party officials for the Democratic National Convention in late August.
While doctors, nurses and surgeons have made sure they have what they need to treat the wounded in their emergency rooms, city leaders say they are prepared with law enforcement strategies as well as violence interruption and emergency response plans.
Then there are the civilian groups who try to prepare people if they are present for an act of violence, and who try to help those affected by it put their lives back together after the worst has happened. Chicago is increasingly relying on them to step in and aid a city with an uphill road in front of it.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Caroline Kubzansky and Sam Charles.
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