Alabama hospitals are now required under state law to report non-accidental gunshot wounds to law enforcement, closing a gap that left police in the dark about a share of the shooting victims passing through emergency rooms.
The law took effect September 1, 2019, making Alabama no longer one of only three states where hospitals were not required to report such injuries. Before it passed, a shooting victim brought to a hospital by private vehicle might never trigger a police report because of federal patient-privacy rules.
What trauma doctors were seeing
Doctors at USA Health University Hospital in Mobile said the discrepancy was significant. Dr. Jon Simmons, the hospital’s chief trauma medical director, said staff believed they were treating more shooting victims than police knew about. By sharing de-identified data with law enforcement, he said, the hospital determined roughly 30 percent of its gunshot patients had been unknown to police.
Simmons said University Hospital treats approximately 300 gunshot victims each year, more than half of them within Mobile city limits. He noted the hospital was on pace for about 2,500 trauma admissions that year, with roughly 20 percent involving penetrating injuries such as gunshot and stab wounds.
How the law came about
Mobile Police Commander Curtis Graves credited partnerships for moving the legislation forward, including conversations with State Representative Adeline Clark, who embraced the department’s concerns. Graves also leads Project Thrive, an MPD effort focused on helping victims of violent crime.
Simmons said he hopes treating gun violence as a public health crisis — much like traffic crashes — will help reduce shootings over time. With Alabama’s law now on the books, New Mexico and Wyoming remained the only states without mandatory reporting requirements.