Lesson 1: Don’t run from the police.
PHILADELPHIA — It was the fourth time Mike Abdullah was attending the class in basic combat medicine for civilians, and he still shook his head ruefully at the scenes playing out before him.
An 11-year-old boy lay on the ground and tried his best to be limp, dead weight, while a former Navy medic taught those around him the best way to carry him to safety. A female nurse in scrubs showed a group of adults and children how to locate the brachial artery and stop massive bleeding with the pressure of a single thumb. One of her male counterparts watched some of his young trainees wince as he taught them to apply and tighten tourniquets.
Abdullah, 61, and a community organizer – who lost a brother and four nephews to gun violence – recognized the importance of these lessons, especially for the younger crowd. He just wished they never had to be taught.
“I’m ashamed. I want them to be kids,” Abdullah said. “A child wants to be a child, and their biggest problem should be going to school and making A’s and learning.
“But we have to teach them to stay alive.”
The class was part of a Temple University program called Fighting Chance, which takes a practical – if startling- approach to helping save lives in crime-addled areas by training residents how to triage the victims of shootings and other violent crimes before an ambulance arrives. Before Fighting Chance even launched, the Obama administration announced a similar effort, Stop the Bleed, in the fall.
Scott Charles, Temple’s trauma outreach coordinator who helped develop the class, said that he believes people intuitively want to help others. He pointed to the many bystanders who rushed to aid the victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the lives saved during the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, where strangers made tourniquets out of T-shirts.
“In Philly, we haven’t had a terrorist incident, but we do have people getting shot every day,” Charles said.
While overall cases of violent crime are decreasing in recent decades across the country, Philadelphia is one of 26 large U.S. cities – Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas, among others – that have reported an increase in homicides this year. Reports show that through June, there were already 122 murders, up from 115 in 2015.