Workshop alerts hospitals to gang issues

Nearly 100 health care professionals from hospitals across Rhode Island participated in a workshop last Wednesday to raise their awareness of gang activity in the state, help them identify gang members and take appropriate safety precautions.
The workshop was hosted by the Center for Health Professions, in collaboration with the Rhode Island Gang Taskforce.
The key message was that while hospitals have long considered themselves “neutral” territory in gang wars, in reality more and more gang members are coming in for treatment, and emergency rooms are having to reevaluate how they triage and care for them.
Attendees learned about gang activity in general as well as gang affiliations, signs, markings and language, and they were given tools to assess their organizations’ preparedness and find resources and strategies to help stem the flow of violence from the community into hospitals.
“As prosecutors who have worked on literally dozens of gang-related crime cases all over Rhode Island with the workshop’s speakers, we know first-hand that a gang member’s affiliation with his gang doesn’t just stop simply because he walks into an ER for treatment or to check on somebody who’s been hurt,” said Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch.
“By collaborating with the health care professionals who in many instances of gang violence are the first responders,” he added, “we may be able to prevent future acts of violence whose victims could be the caregivers themselves.”
Speakers included Ruth Ricciarelli, executive director of the Center for Health Professions; Maj. Stephen Bannon and Detective Peter Chabot of the R.I. State Police; Sgt. Michael Wheeler of the Providence Police Department Gang Unit; and Anthony Silva, executive director of the R.I. Police Training Academy.
The Center for Health Professions was launched in 2007 by the Health Partnership Council – a coalition that operates under the auspices of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island – to promote quality health care through work force development initiatives. For more information, go to www.hari.org.