Traumatic Racism

What's going on? I'm not used to this sort of behaviour... I don't attract trauma calls! My colleagues might disagree, but I'm sure I never used to get called to so many people with traumatic injuries. Another day, another stabbing. The area where I work has its fair share of anti-social behaviour, but there seems to have been an upsurge in the more serious type, including shootings and stabbings.

This time it was a male in his 30's. The call came in as stabbed in the face, and I was told to hide somewhere away from the scene to ensure that police turned up. As I was just about to hide, a stream of police cars, marked and unmarked, went flying past me on blue lights. I had no doubt that they were going to the same place I was, so joined the convoy. It must have looked to the general public that war must have broken out somewhere.

The man is standing in the street, looking a little pale, and covered from head to toe in blood. He was with a group of friends who were totally intent on keeping the police out of the property where they all lived. The patient had a very deep slash mark on his face and a stab wound in his shoulder. He was, unsurprisingly, a little agitated and kept trying to walk off the back of the ambulance. Eventually it seemed that the reality of the situation hit him, and he fell onto the trolley bed in the ambulance and allowed us to treat him.

When his friends were asked what had happened, they claimed that he was approached in the street by a group of 4 or 5 people of another ethnic group to their own, and just randomly slashed across the face. The police seemed to think that the attack happened in the property, and was an altercation between the "friends". In an effort to cover this up, they had to find a scapegoat. So they blamed an unseen, but clearly identifiable group who looked completely different from them.

Now, the word ALLEGEDLY should be plastered all across this post, because it's all pending an investigation by police, and probably go to court. Still, I couldn't help but feel that the reason behind their story was not just one of hiding the truth, but had a nasty element of racism behind it. It was almost a case of finding an easy target to blame, one that was easy to believe. One that the police, at least initially, wouldn't question and that the ambulance staff wouldn't bat an eyelid at.

Which made me think that maybe I was guilty of it too.