When five police officers were shot in Houston in January 2019 while serving a drug-related arrest warrant, all of them were transported to the hospital after emergency medical services arrived. Two went by air and three by ground ambulance.

About seven months later, a gunman in Philadelphia shot six police officers during another drug warrant execution. Videos show police putting the wounded officers into their vehicles to take them to the hospital themselves, without waiting for EMS.

Finally, in 2024 in Chicago, in an accidental shooting, the same bullet pierced a 16-year-old boy and a policeman. A detective confirmed to me that the officer was immediately taken to a trauma center by fellow officers, while the boy waited for an ambulance.

These are just a few of the many examples of varying protocols across U.S. cities for how injured citizens and police officers are transported to medical facilities. This contrast in protocol is remarkable for policing, a profession that operates by standard procedure.

In each case, officers did what they were supposed to do. They acted according to the rules. But were those rules in the best interests of the injured?

The goal is to get medical treatment as quickly as possible. But the quality and effectiveness of that care in the field matters too.

We research health policy, health services and decisions in prehospital care – the interval between when a medical emergency occurs and a person arrives at the hospital. This led us to wonder: What do police do after one of their own has been shot?

How wounded police are transported

To study this important question, we turned to the Gun Violence Archive, a national database of shootings in the United States, to identify shootings in which law enforcement personnel were wounded.

We focused on cities that had at least 10 police officers shot in the line of duty from 2018 to 2024. This resulted in a total of 574 police wounded in 27 cities.

Then, using news reports, police reports and video analysis, we........

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