Sunday, September 3, 2017

The video of the July 26th arrest of a nurse in a burn ward for refusing to allow an officer to draw blood from an unconscious patient is disturbing, but in my case, not surprising.  The officer, Detective Jeff Payne, of the Salt Lake City Police Department, apparently lost his composure when a civilian challenged his authority, even after hearing the same opinion from her superiors over the phone.  The detective was told my his supervisor, Lt. James Tracy, to arrest the nurse if she refused to allow him to draw the man's blood. Other officers at the scene were apparently also ignorant of the law and refused to step in to assist the nurse and save the detective from a false arrest. 

The nurse, Alex Wubbels, is the head nurse of the burn ward at the University of Utah Medical Centre, in Salt Lake City.  She refused to allow Detective Payne to draw blood from her patient and was physically removed from the hospital and placed into handcuffs and into the detective's police car.  Nurse Wubbels sat in the police car for 20 minutes before being released without charges.

The back story to this is that the patient was in a traffic accident  at the end of a pursuit involving the Utah Highway Patrol.  The suspect being pursued was killed in the accident.  

So I can see the need to obtain the man's blood for the sure to come law suit against the pursuing agency, but it doesn't take that long to get a search warrant.   The detective could be facing false arrest, battery and false imprisonment charges. 

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