Looks like internal affairs wasn’t too impressed by the cop’s, or the Lt’s, behavior. Internal Affairs Report Blasts Detective Jeff Payne for Arrest of Nurse Alex Wubbels
She’s also a former Olympian, having represented the USA in the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games. Can’t get any more apple pie than that.
*… violated five departmental policies, including **courtesy ** in public contacts and conduct unbecoming of an officer. Payne’s behavior was “inappropriate, unreasonable, unwarranted, discourteous, disrespectful” and showed “extremely poor professional judgment,” investigators wrote. *
Damn, someone broke out the thesaurus.
The Salt Lake Tribune has an article which includes links to the internal investigation reports (pdf) for both Detective Payne and Lt. Tracy. What is more interesting is the Civilian Review, which has redacted some parts, but finds that the officers did screw up. From the Trib article.
Article:
Some interesting parts including the review board believes that Payne allowed himself to get too agitated and that other officers failed to utilize the deescalation policies.
It may be possible that there will be real consequences.
IIRC, the moment Payne completely flipped out was when the person on the phone told him that he was making a huge mistake.
Guess phone person was right.
The Civilian Review investigation mentions Payne possibly unhappy with “contempt of cop.” Could be.
That just seems to be his driving force, he was really unhappy people were telling him no.
Just from a healthcare standpoint it seems to me potentially dangerous to be poking holes in people who are burn victims. Not to mention the unconscious victim probably could use as much of his blood on the inside rather than having it unnecessarily removed.
The Tribune has another article concerning this aftermath.
Payne’s attorney believes that the department will discipline his client based on the scathing report (linked above)
Coincidentally enough, there was a rerun of ER on yesterday that features something similar to this. A policeman is demanding a blood test from a patient, Doctor Carter tells him to come back with a warrant. He comes back with a warrant, then demands to also get the stomach contents from a bedpan where the guy had thrown up. Carter asks if that is in the warrant–it isn’t, Carter dumps it down a sink. Cop arrests Carter, handcuffs him, takes him to jail.
Translated:
Unfortunately there is a video proving how bone deep stupid my client was and if it hadn’t been made public we would have been able to gloss over his raging incompetence.
…as usual.
Now we know where Eric Cartman moved when he grew up. :smack:
And he would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling Youtubers!
As for the other cops on the scene I get the impression that at least one of them was trying to convince him not to go through with the arrest, and more to the point when you’re in a situation like that it can be dangerous for police not to show a united front.
How would it have been dangerous for the police to be more committed to following the law than covering for their colleagues illegal behavior in this situation.
I can kinda get where one police has started threatening lethal force against a suspect, then other officers need to as well, even if they disagree with the need for it, because that officer has escalated the situation to that level, but there was no potential for any sort of harm to befall any of the officers, not physical harm, anyway. If showing a united front is to protect the pride of a misbehaving officer, then that presents far more of a danger to the community they are supposed to protect than admitting that they are wrong.
It might not be in this specific situation however they are trained for dangerous situations and it becomes unthinkable to go against the leader in tense situations.
Then that is a problem with their training. If their leader is creating the tense situation, and being the impetus behind ever level of escalation, then they need to learn to think for themselves, and realize that what is happening here is not right, that what they are doing is violating the rights of those they are interacting with, that the actions that they are attempting will damage relations between the police and the community, then their training needs to teach them how to step up and intervene when their leader is the one who is the problem in the situation.
If they can’t do that, then they aren’t really promoting law and order.
I encourage you to read the report by the Police Civilian Review Board, linked in my post above.
As part of their formal deescalation program, the SLCPD specifically has implemented an informal intervention code (Code 909) which is to be used when an officer recognizes that another officer has become “frustrated” and to temporarily take over while the agitated officer calms down. This is to allow officers to help each other before the situation gets out of hand and an officer does something to jeopardize their career.
While noting some of his actions, the reports faults a back up officer “W” for not intervening more forcefully with Payne, although they acknowledge it’s a difficult choice to make. By not intervening, W allowed Payne to really fuck up.*
*Not the exact wording of the report, although it would have been refreshing.
Something similar happened in airline training, where people had to be taught to express concerns to the pilot.
And the Trib reports that Payne had received letters of reprimand for sexual harassment and violating police policies.
He also did have a number of commendations.
Utah cop wants to apologize for cuffing nurse
Maybe do a couple of verses of Kumbaya. Or Hakuna Matata.
Also,
I neglected earlier to include my usual prediction of a round of blame-the-victim. I’ll try to do better next time. Anyone want to offer bets on there being a next time?
Projammer, We’re done! I SAID WE’RE DONE!!! Now you STFU about all this ‘blaming the victim’ BS or I’ll shut it for you!!! (that’s my Jeff Payne impersonation, in case you couldn’t tell)
P.S. My wager is that the ‘next time’ will be within the next 5-30 days.
Sadly, it appears that the victim of the crash has died.
Not surprisingly, the Salt Lake Police Association isn’t happy with the bod cam not getting [del]buried forever[/del] withheld until after all the investigations are completed.
But we all know whose fault it is, according to the Association president
Well, not really as bad as arresting and roughing up a nurse. It’s embarrassing and it does not look good.