Police Response Criticized: Public Outcry After Fatal Shooting Incident

When Michael Usher was fatally shot on Monday night, his last moments were caught on video and shared on social media. It resulted in a public outcry for the police to transport shooting victims to the hospital in situations as such.  Police Commissioner Chester Williams says that in situations like what happened to Usher, police are advised by medical personnel not to move the patient. His sentiments were echoed by Minister of Home Affairs, Kareem Musa, who says that, despite knowing Usher well, he knows that the officers had a good reason to wait for the ambulance.

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs: “Yeah I saw the video footage and yes I did feel a lot of empathy, a lot of sympathy for the victim particularly because I knew him well. I knew Mr.Usher well and to see him take his last breath like that on the ground a few minutes before the ambulance arrived certain was very painful as most Belizean had to witness that take place. And I know your follow up question is “Why didn’t the police officers take Mr.Usher to the hospital ?” and I would agree with you to some extent but as you know they are not trained medical practitioners, they are not trained to deal with injured individuals like that in emergency training. That is best left to a doctor. I actually had a conversation with a doctor at the KHMH who deals in this type of accident, trauma, gunshot wounds and he said the best case scenario are not to touch the individual and so that is coming from a doctor that if an ambulance is nearby it is best to wait for the ambulance to come but again in a situation like that it did take a little while for the ambulance to get there and so I think in a circumstance like that where ambulance is not immediately around the corner that perhaps the police department and police officers should have taken him to the hospital. Yes we do have training you know in terms of first aid emergency response but not to the level of training them to be these types of doctors. They’re not trained doctors they’re police officers, or EMTs they’re not EMTs. So yes we do have first aid training for our police officers but at the same time we have to understand that there’s a separate department for fire, there’s a separate department for doctors who are properly trained. It takes years and years for them to be properly trained in order to deal with victims like this. The doctor I was speaking with this morning mentioned that one bad turn that you handle a particular victim could result in that person dying because of the gunshot and the way that the individual is placed one bad handling of the patient could result in their death. And so there are two sides to that argument but we have to look at it and certainly I think there is some middle ground that we can arrive at.”

Commissioner Williams said earlier this week that the police department would be reviewing the policy regarding transporting gunshot victims.