HOUSTON – June is Gun Violence Awareness month and data from the State Comptroller’s Office shows Texas spends tens of millions of dollars helping victims of this crime. However, data from the Harris Health system shows accidental shootings also have a heavy financial impact.
“What’s more challenging to capture is what’s the cost to that person and their inability to get back to work,” said Dr. Chad Wilson, Section Chief of Acute Care Surgery at Harris Health Ben Taub Hospital. “Lifelong inability to to work, lifelong pain, hernias, inability to eat, and that’s not getting into the traumatic brain injuries that are non-lethal.”
Data from the State Comptrollers Office shows since 2021, more than $171 million has been paid through the Crime Victims Compensation Fund to victims of gun violence and their families.
The Harris Health system alone tallied more than $44 million in gunshot related charges involving 2,440 cases between June 1, 2021 and May 31, 2022. However, Harris County data shows 67% of these cases were “accidental/unintentional.”
“Typically it’s cleaning the weapon, or holstering it or while trying to get it out of the holster to protect themselves,” said WIlson. “The most common pattern we see is people shoot themselves either in their hand or in their thigh when it’s a holster type situation,”
Wilson said whether accidental or intentional, gunshot wound victims can also experience lifelong psychological trauma, especially when they have to return to the environment where they were shot.
“If you are shot in the community where you live, you’re shot next door to your home, or you’re shot in your home, shot maybe by someone that you care about; that is incredibly stressful and it’s a very hard thing to make a full recovery from,” said Wilson.
Both Houston and Harris County governments have been deploying different tactics to try to bring down the number of violent crimes. A little over a year ago Harris County Public Health launched a violence interruption program in the 77021, 77033 and 77051 zip codes in southeast Houston. The program is also running the 77090 zip code in the Cypress area.
“It is really about addressing the root causes (of violence), a lot of them stemming from unemployment or lacking job skills,” said Dr. Larry Brown, Jr., Associate Director of the Community Violence Interruption Program. “Also those having difficulty with housing resources and food resources.”
The program works by sending outreach specialists into a community to find out what needs are not being met. These specialists also act as mediators in community disputes.
“The number one thing that helps with the interactions are the relationships and the ties that the individual outreach specialists have with the communities in these hot spots,” said Brown. “Our outreach specialists were able to, through their relationships, talk individuals down from retaliating in instances related to gun violence.”
Brown said the program has been able to prevent 18 instances of violence by diffusing community disputes.
Houston Police also recently reported a 12% drop in violent crime for the first quarter of 2023. HPD said increases in behavioral health programs, increased responses to domestic and sexual abuse and overtime for officers policing violence hot spots have helped bring the numbers down