Even veteran emergency room personnel were impressed by the photos of bloody street-gang knife wounds known as "the buck fifty," a deep gash along the jaw line. "It's called that because it takes 150 stitches to close the cut," New Jersey parole officer Raymond Vonderheide told nurses, doctors, technicians and other staff at Englewood (NJ) Hospital and Medical Center. An appreciative murmur for "the buck fifty" went up among the about 70 people who attended the conference on hospital security, including how to identify gang members by their tattoos, jewelry, caps, clothing colors, numerical codes, hand signals, graffiti, dance steps and scars. The half-day training session was part of a statewide violence education campaign for health professionals, sponsored by the state Parole Board's Street Gang Unit and the New Jersey Hospital Association.
