In early November, Michael Smith was shot in the thigh after an argument with a close friend in front of his grandmother’s home in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. Smith’s cousin called 911, but 15 minutes later, they were still waiting for an ambulance. “I don’t want to die from bleeding out,” Smith remembers thinking.

So he took matters into his own hands. A friend drove him to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, about 10 minutes away, where he spent a few hours being treated for his wound. Ultimately, it took the ambulance about half an hour to arrive at his grandmother’s house, Smith’s cousin told him. Had they not traveled to West Suburban themselves, Smith said, “I probably would have died.”

Chicagoans have heard this story over and over again: when someone gets shot, ambulances don’t always arrive quickly, and victims don’t always survive. As a result, survivors of gun violence say they don’t trust the city’s Emergency Medical Services. To avoid the risk that a delayed transport could cause an avoidable loss, many gunshot victims are getting rides from friends or driving themselves to a nearby hospital, forgoing transportation in an ambulance for a chance to reach an emergency room on time.

People like Smith experience only the end result of a systemic problem: After a shooting, the ambulance takes a long time to reach the crime scene. But what they don’t see is that, beneath the surface of the Chicago Fire Department’s worsening response times, the department is also failing to keep track of this information. Although Chicago’s Office of the Inspector General has called for the Fire Department to improve its data collection every year since 2021, more information has been missing from its records.

Before the city can get more ambulances to respond on time, experts say, it must first monitor the problem more thoroughly. “If you have that data to support your needs and your requests, it might make it easier for the authority of jurisdiction when requesting future needs,” said Ken Holland, a senior specialist with the National Fire Protection Association, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that sets safety standards.

When someone like Smith leaves a scene before an ambulance arrives, they’re not counted in CFD’s records, so it’s hard to say how many gunshot victims fall into that group. But research and interviews show that many people opt for alternative transportation options, because of distrust in paramedics, fears about cost, or other reasons.

When an ambulance takes too long to arrive, Smith said, it makes residents feel like the city and its first responders don’t care.“They need to do better,” he said.

The Fire Department did not respond to requests for comment.

A decade-long data problem

A Trace analysis of last year’s medical emergency incidents, including accidents, seizures, and shootings through November 19, 2024, found that, in more than one in five cases, Chicago EMS took more than six minutes to respond, the state’s threshold for adequate response time. But it also found that data was missing in over 43,000 incidents.

“To not put a priority on managing, maintaining, and then setting standards with this data is almost negligence,” said Cheo Patrick, the CEO of a crisis management consultant company who has personal experience with emergency response times in Chicago.

Since 2013, the Inspector General’s Office has sounded the alarm that CFD has failed to accurately document the data necessary to assess whether it’s meeting the six-minute standard for EMS response times. The Fire Department also still hasn’t implemented several recommendations made by the oversight office.

Five years ago, the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications approved new computer aided dispatch, mobile and analytics software for the city’s 911 Center to improve emergency response times. In 2023, CFD said it was targeting late 2023 to early 2024 for its rollout, but as of February 2025, it had not gone into effect. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.

The Fire Department also said it would partner with Urban Labs at the University of Chicago to analyze response times. But a representative from the university said in an email to The Trace that their collaborative work has focused on “911 emergency communications center operations, occupational wellness, and the intersection between 911 calls and dispatch — particularly calls dispatched to police or to alternative/diversified response teams.” They have not looked at ambulance response times.

Data collection is only getting worse. The Trace’s analysis showed that the amount of missing data grew from 12.3 percent in 2021 to 13.1 percent in 2024 through mid-November. Data transparency is important, said Patrick, the consultant, to maintain the community’s confidence in first responders.

“As a civilian, you should feel confident in knowing that your life, the life of your loved ones, the life of individuals in your community have value,” he said. “Where’s the level of due care for people who are in dire, traumatic situations?”

Gunshot victims take matters into their own hands

Patrick understands the split-second decision many Chicagoans have to make after being shot.

About 16 years ago, he visited family and friends in the South Shore neighborhood where he grew up. An argument with some residents he didn’t know escalated, and he was shot in his lower leg. Patrick told his friend to drive him to the University of Chicago Medical Center, which was eight minutes away. “Every second counts in those situations,” he said. Just a few years earlier, Patrick’s friend bled out and died from what he thought was a minor gunshot wound to the leg, but which turned out to be a serious hit to the artery. Patrick didn’t want the same thing to happen to him.

He later found out that someone had called 911, but the ambulance took about 15 to 20 minutes to arrive. He was relieved that his friend drove him.

Nowadays, Patrick said, the increasingly lethal weapons used in shootings make gunfire even harder to survive . That’s why paramedics are crucial. But, he said, first responders have to be more proactive in creating trust between themselves and the community, especially in Black and brown neighborhoods. There’s a tense history, Patrick said, between first responders and the trauma that takes place in these areas.

The Trace’s analysis of gunshot incidents between 2021 and November 2024 showed that areas on the South Side were among the most affected by slow response times. Last year, Ward 9, which includes Chatham, Roseland, Pullman, Washington Heights, West Pullman, and Riverdale, had the highest number of gunshot-related calls to which it took more than six minutes for an ambulance to arrive. During the same time frame, one in five calls in that area had slow response times.

Collecting and analyzing geolocation data, Holland, the national expert, said, can help answer questions like, “Where are the needs not being met in the community?”

The city can then use that data to justify adding ambulances to CFD’s fleet, reducing ambulance response times, and, ultimately, building trust in a skeptical public. “There’s a big gap in terms of feeling confident and trust with [first responders], to take our lives in their hands and make sure that we’re OK,” Patrick said. “The unknown that you’re walking into, with that situation being life or death, is very scary.”

Aaron Mendelson contributed data reporting to this story.

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