The Violent Heart of LA Our World

see first-hand the consequences of gun violence. Viewer's may find

some images in this programme unsettling.

Los Angeles, California. Wealthy, glamourous, home to the world's

entertainment industry. It's also the state with the highest gun

murder rate in America. It's happening every day. A mother. A

father. Children. All due to gun violence. We have been getting

unique access to one of the busiest emergency trauma clinics in the

country. They get a constant stream of gunshot wound victims coming

through the door here. The city is home to over 400 gangs, with more

than 40,000 members. The outcomes are very simple, and there are only

two. Either you go to prison for Los Angeles County General. A state

funded hospital in impoverished east LA. It serves the area's Paul,

and insured, and largely Latino population. Its pioneering trauma

unit is classed as Level 1. This means it provides the highest level

of surgical care to the most seriously injured. Those treated

here have a 25% greater chance of survival than at an ordinary

hospital. I'm a survivor of multiple gunshot injuries myself

after being shot six times by terrorists in Saudi Arabia in 2004.

My cameraman, Simon Cumbers, was killed. Now I have come to witness

how this trauma unit in LA, and its patients, I impacted by the

violence brought in from the surrounding streets. -- are

impacted. How much do you know about this one

already? A gunshot wound to the buttock, which is considered... a

gunshot wound to the torso. Midnight and a casualty is coming

in. It's a gunshot victim with potentially life-threatening

injuries. The trauma team is The man has been shot several times

in the lower body. He is conscious and talking. He tells the trauma

team he was shocked the 4th. He is what they call a frequent flyer --

shot before. Won in the thigh, one by the groin and one in the back.

That's basically all I have got. This is the second gunshot wound

victim to be brought in tonight, it is just after midnight. This one is

fairly stable, but he has five pull it wins and they are attending to

them now. -- pull it wounds. Crucially he hasn't been shot in

the abdomen, which means he won't need major surgery this evening. He

will be patched up and he will go to a ward and not the operating

room. The next day, we arrive at the

hospital just after two more of gunshot wound victims have been

brought in. -- Two more gunshot wound. Upstairs in the operating

theatre, Critical Care surgeon Kenji Inaba is working on one of

them. There's another one here. What's that, 8? An unidentified

male in a serious condition after being shot just an hour ago.

think there's another couple down here as well. Two separate gunshot

wounds, probably fired very close together in time, hitting him at

two separate spots. Impossible to tell if it went from this side to

the back for this side up. They are detecting where all the bullets

Arnaud. I have to say, this is both weird and fascinating for me. This

is pretty much how I would have been brought in, scooped up off the

streets nine years ago when I was shot. But once you get over the

initial... kind of, goriness of this, and it is, it is pretty

grisly to look at, it's extraordinary how quickly they

operate. The real goal is to ask the question, is there any active

bleeding? There's a fair amount of blood in there. The next goal is to

find out what else is injured. We can take our time and protect what

else is injured. He looks pretty good at the moment. We have a bit

of time now. We're going to take a very careful look at all of the

bowel to see where all the bullets are.

We invited to a reunion for the trauma Team's most regular

survivors, with a whole variety of injuries. Dr Demetrios Demetriades,

the man to whom many over their lives, has been head of trauma here

for over 20 years. Good day, good morning, how are you? Everything

all right? Wonderful, thank you. What is the latest? Advances in

surgical techniques and the creation of Level 1 trauma centres

like this has significantly improved outcomes for gunshot wound

victims. Are you doing physiotherapy? Nothing OK. Where is

the pain? My abdomen.It is our pleasure. It is an area I have come

to learn about through my own experiences. Patients who have been

brought in here, after being shot in East LA, in the old days they

would operate and do some major surgery in the first 24 hours. Now

more of them are living because you are stabilising and damage

controlling them. Yes, in the past you would spend hours and hours in

the operating room trying to the definitive final repair. And, of

course, the patient would fix everything and then the patient

would die a few hours later. Now we have learned to move in stages.

First, we stop the bleeding. We leave the abdomen open and we fix

the physiology of the patient, we stayed there lays them to normal,

the blood Kulacz delays and costs again -- we stabilised. That is

normally 36 hours later. Then you can go to the operating room for

the definitive repair. It makes a huge difference for ab injuries,

chest injuries, vascular injury is. These are the notes that they made

from my time in hospital in trauma in Saudi Arabia dashed vascular

injuries. In Saudi Arabia your temperature was 30 degrees. You

were in DSE, that means that your blood was not putting any more. To

start with, the temperature of 30 degrees... your chances of survival

are really, really very small. I'm very pleased and you are lucky that

you are alive at this stage. Certainly the surgeon did a

phenomenal job. You were really physiologically... you are what we

call in extremist. In extreme this means that at any minute you're

going to die -- in extremist. Back at the reunion, and for some

the celebration is in full swing. Unexpectedly light entertainment

for the families of survivors. One man here, Greg Supernova, is

especially grateful to the surgeons who saved him. I just got out of

school and went to go visit a friend. Got out of my truck. That's

all I remember. Woke up in the hospital. Wow!! You don't remember

anyone coming up? I had seven gunshot wounds. Where were they?

One straight through my heart, won through my shoulder. Through the

heart? Yes. Then I got two in one leg, two in another leg, won

through my private area and I got grazed on my arm, on my wrist. I

was in hospital on -- for 21 days, I got out on Fourth of July and

then I got kidney stones. I have had that, they are so painful.

know. Have you got these super?I have. That is exactly what mind

looks like. We are just comparing zippers. They are very good.This

is the garden zipper. It is a pale shadow compared. I like that one

better. I was open for seven months. Yours will look like that in a

couple of years. It's great that you made such a good recovery. Well

What are the injuries? A gunshot wound to the lower extremities and

one to the lower torso. This is not an exceptional evening. This

hospital sees a quarter of all the 2,500 surviving than shock win

victims brought in each year in the wider LA area. Most young men

caught up in gang warfare -- Dr Leo Rodriguez is in charge of

the students here. Does your belly hurt? This guy has been brought in

off the streets, he has been shot once through the Emmy. This is

typical late at night. -- knee. They are going to scan him, do some

X-rays and do whatever they need to do tonight. He was brought in by

the police. He is not so much, but we are told he fits the profile of

a gang member. Did he identify the people who shot him? No, he is not

being Co-Operative. Oh, really? He is being very co-operative with

them. They are not the police.Has he been shot before? Yes, twice

before. It leaves us in a difficult circumstances. It is normally an

internal think where they will take care of it themselves. Dr Rodriguez

is a serving US Navy medic. The hospital gets to use his vital

skills and in return he trains a rolling succession of made the

servicemen and women on the job. Dr Rodriguez, you spend most of last

year in Afghanistan at Kandahar Airfield, a place I visited quite a

few times -- you spend. How is what you saw their comparing to the

injuries you see here? There's no way to recreate what they are going

to see on the battlefield and what they are going to be expected to

two. But the tremendous gap in what they are trained on in the

classroom and what they see, this will bridge that gap. You can get

as close as you can hear. This is as close as they can get. The NAB

has chosen this hospital because it treats people coming from the most

dangerous parts of California -- the Navy. Yeah, absolutely. That's

one of the most important parts of it. As a military man, as a Navy

doctor, are you shocked by the kind of violence people are committing

on each other in the civilian population in Los Angeles? You must

as seen some horrific injuries? have been here for ten years and

you see quite a bit. I am getting used to it. It is still shocking.

People get themselves into trouble and they get traumatically injured

and I don't think they deserved it, but they are caught in the

crossfire. And some are as a result of the life choices they have made

and they have found themselves to Not everyone pulls through. A short

distance from the hospital, I went to visit a mother, the de seven-

year-old Lorraine Morland. -- 57- year-old. The song, My daughter

road, because it was very difficult for her to accept the death of her

brother. He was such a good boy. Just a loving kid. She has lost two

sons to gun violence. She will never forget the first phone call.

I am thinking, you do not think that your son is dying. You think

that it will be all right. That is my baby, my son, my boy. Mind these

calls me, and I'm getting ready to go. -- my it Neeson. She says,

these words to me, Auntie, that he did not make it. You did not get to

the hospital in time? No.Do you know who shot him? No, we still did

not know who did it. My son was 28. It happened again? Yes, it happened

again with my other son. He got shot and he died. He was at a

friend's house in a bad neighbourhood, but he was raised in

that neighbourhood, he was raised in the quad, he wore died days in

the neighbourhood, so they knew everybody. You are part of a

campaign, Mothers Against Violence. Are you making progress? I think so.

When I first came into the programme, I thought I was the only

one going through that, until I realised that this happens every

day. Mothers and fathers losing their children due to gun violence.

Miguel of Wideroe was lucky. He was targeted by gains on his own

doorstep. He has had an incredibly narrow escape. He saw somebody from

the forest. Four shots. He ran and died, took one in the cheek and one

on the back of the neck. Did you know who they were? Random people?

Can you feel any sensation in your feet? Miguel's distraught mother

watched helpless. She tells me she was standing outside her home,

playing with her three-year-old daughter, when suddenly a back -- a

black car drove by and the passengers started shooting

randomly at her son. What year is it? Who is the President? This is

the reality of daily gun crime in the US. A drive-by shooting like

this is never going to make the headlines like the big recent

massacres, but in the few days that we have been in this hospital, we

have seen a constant stream of gunshot wound hospitals --

casualties, because many are caught in the crossfire of a gang ward

that is being fought on the streets just outside his hospital.

Following recent mass shootings in the United States, the country is

in the midst of one of the most politically divisive debate in its

history. Those who believe with almost religious conviction in

their right to bear arms, pitted against those who want tighter gun

control laws. Broadcaster Piers Morgan, an LA resident who received

death threats and a campaign to deport him, after publicly speaking

out for tighter gun control, knows it only too well. America has 300

million guns in circulation. They are everywhere. You can walk into a

ball much store, a store like Tesco's, and you can see racks of

guns on the walls. -- a Wal-Mart store. They are that easy to buy.

Statistically, most of the gun crime in the US is carried out by

criminals, who have got the guns illegally, so gun-control would not

stop them. There are various types of gun violence, but collectively,

they had the worst gun violence of any of the 23 industrialised,

richest countries in the world put together. We have up to 40 gun

deaths in a year. America has up to 12,000 gun murders, another 18,000

done suicides, 100,000 Americans get hit by gunfire every year, and

the only reason the death rate is not a lot higher because of -- is

because of the brilliance of the surgeons in the hospitals, who had

such sophisticated technology that they can save more lives. Violence

on the street involving illegally opened weapons and games will not

be solved by gun control a lion. California already has some of the

tightest laws in the country. I am on my way to South Central, to meet

Alfred Lomas. Also another reformed gang member with a violent history.

Now they are taking matters into their own hands. To do what you

have got to do. I want you to stand down, is that clear? Now they are

working in a community, trying to put others towards a better life.

They are training all of these XK members and how to deal escalate a

situation, two S stop it getting out of control. -- to stop it. Get

away from my school. If you had a gun, we would do it. And do not

come back. You are from this neighbourhood. It looks like a

pretty normal neighbourhood. Does it change by night? You do not

realise that we are in the middle of a war-zone. Gun violence do so

mates these communities. 73.9 % of the homicides are by done in these

communities, you realise the impact of gun violence. Until we get some

control, of not only the weaponry itself, but to use it, we have a

serious war that is going to take all our reserves to get in front of.

America has an epidemic history, a history of epidemic violence. Los

Angeles in the last 25 years, over 25,000 people being killed in gang

violence, over 300,000 children under the age of 18 have been shot

over the last 18 years. Post- traumatic stress from sustained

level of violence. To answer your question, what does gun violence do

to a community, it absolutely devastate it. It devastates it on

many levels. Out of his guards and back at home with his family, Kenji

Inaba reflects what it is like to work in such a life and death

environment. The vast majority of our patients are really young. They

are otherwise healthy or leading quite normal lives up to the split

second they were heard. You have this ability to make an impact,

make a difference. It does not always work, but when it does, it

all comes together. You can really impact these people. In a split-

second, everything changes. You get a chance to do some good. Back in

the hospital, I meet a man who has cheated death. Carlos was getting

out of his car after finishing work when he was shot with a pistol,

stabbed and blasted with a shotgun. My little daughter, I love curve.

She can be strong. I am alive. I'm talking to you, right here. Do you

think they thought you were dead? Getting shot like that, yes.

Getting shot 16 times. 16 times. But I pulled through.

The death toll from gun crime in Greater Los Angeles is down by two-

thirds from the early 90s. Some attribute this to more effective

policing and high rates of incarceration. Others, to the

skills of surgeons like the ones we met. But the violence is still

unacceptably high to stop in the last 20 years, more people had died

on American soil in gun violence than all the US servicemen and