Also, the patient was a reserve police officer. They were attempting to protect their own, damn the law.
Which specific law did the officer break?
The Supreme court has ruled that warrantless blood draws are illegal.
The police officer didn’t draw any blood. Which law did HE break? Cite, please.
Unfortunately, this very generous look at the officer is completely off.
The crash occurred in another city. Full stop. It happened up in Logan, several hours to the north of Salt Lake City. The driver would have been transported to Salt Lake because the the University of Utah hospital is the best in the stated.
The police in Logan asked the police in Salt Lake City to draw the blood for them, so the detective would not have been anywhere near the crash.
The nurse was calmly discussing the protocol which the hospital has with the police department when the officer lost it. No. He had not seen the accident. No. There is no excuse for him other than he’s a bully.
His supervisor was the one who ordered the arrest of the nurse and hopefully will also be disciplined as well.
This is a classical example of the police causing the problem and further escalating the situation simply because someone was refusing to be cowed.
If a police officer tells you to do something clearly illegal, I presume that you will comply and will let the courts handle it?
A criminal investigation has been opened, so we won’t formally find out until it concludes. However I imagine he( and/or his supervising officer )could potentially be hit with a charge of false arrest.
So if I just try to break into a car or a home I haven’t broken any laws and can just walk away if confronted?
If I just try to stab someone and miss, no harm no foul?
He tried to coerce someone into breaking the law. That makes him culpable. I don’t doubt that one of our more lawyerly types can quote some case law here.
Too late for an ETA, but reviewing the articles again it may be that he was qualified to draw the blood himself and was attempting to do so. If that were the case he comes even closer to my first examples where not being able to complete a criminal act doesn’t absolve someone from responsibility for having attempted to.
Not trying to justify anyone’s behavior, but I do have a question:
Isn’t the truck driver (which, if I’m reading the situation correctly, is a victim of the fleeing perp, and not in any way involved, at lest in this instance, in any kind of negligent or criminal behavior or conduct) as a commercially/DOT licensed driver, required to have a blood test w/in 12-24 (or some other specified time period) hours of an incident, regardless of whomever’s at fault?
I can’t imagine that the nurse, or some other person in that hospital (or the first hospital in Logan*) has not already drawn a blood sample from the patient. That’s one of the very first things they do in a hospital.
So the police would have (or still can) obtain a warrant to get the results of that original blood draw from when he arrived at the hospital. So that officer & his supervisor were out-of-line in their reaction.
Also, the nurse might have deescalated this situation by taking a blood draw, then sending it to the hospital lab, and telling the police it would be stored there awaiting their arrival with a warrant. Though the reaction of those officer might havve been just as bad.
*P.S. Almost certainly, the patient would have been treated & ‘stabilized’ at Logan before being transported to Salt Lake Hospital. It’s likely that the treatment would have involved injecting some drugs into him. So wouldn’t that have already tainted any blood samples taken at Salt Lake, thus leaving them open to challange by a defense attorney?
Yes, he is a trained police flea bottomist. Also moonlighted as an ambulance driver. In the latter part of the tape of this incident, he told somebody that from now on he was only bringing homeless people to that hospital and taking all of the “good patients” somewhere else. The guy is a giant douche.
The officer has been placed on administrative leavealready.
The officer seems to be thinking that his opinion is above the Supreme Court ruling, or he’s just an ignorant piece of trash that didn’t know or care.
The nurse tried to de-escalate the situation, as did her supervisor. The perp didn’t care
Future considerations of judicial punishment should never take priority over present considerations of protecting the rights of victims, nor even suspects. The only issue involving the blood draw was the future avenue at penalty phase, and constitutional rights cannot be ignored simply to ease the burden of whom to punish and how severely.
Sadly, it often seems that bringing somebody to justice takes priority over defense of civil society and constitutional due process, in the minds of law officers.
According to the Washington Post:
“The U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that blood can only be drawn from drivers for probable cause, with a warrant.”
So there is no question who was in the wrong. As a ‘trained police phlebotomist’ the officer must have known this.
Or killed him. He was burned; taking blood or piercing his skin is dangerous, it risks stress and infection in a situation where he’s already hurt and with diminished defenses against infection.
According to the articles, the reason the officer was pushing so hard was that they would not be able to obtain a warrant as there was not any probable cause. You are correct that they could have used some of the stored samples of the driver later gave voluntary consent
Fuck no. This is blaming the victim. The nurse was in no way escalating the situation. There was absolutely no excuse for the officer to lose it like he did. Even had he arrested the nurse, which would still be bad, there was no reason to act that suddenly, without warning or restraint. This guy should not be wearing a badge.
Whose defense attorney? The driver was a victim.
I don’t think that would have been an option, and could have placed the nurse in violation of her ethical obligations and the law.
A medical person can draw blood from an unconscious person without their consent if it’s needed for medical purposes. However, there was no indication that she needed to take a sample for that reason. Drawing blood just to de-escalate wouldn’t meet that condition, so she’s in breach.
A medical person can also draw blood from an unconscious person without their consent if it’s required by a court order, such as a search warrant. Absent that, drawing blood would put her in breach.
If you want section and subsection, I can’t help you. OTOH, depending on your own knowledge of the law, I might be able to get away with throwing some numbers out and relying on you not having the expertise to confidently declare them bullshit. I’m not going to do that, though.
Instead, I’m going to presume that you DO have sufficient knowledge of the law, and ask YOU which specific law the officer was FOLLOWING.
Respectfully to the posters above, I know that Detective Payne said he was acting to protect the crash victim, but I believe he and his department were lying. The crash victim was under no obligation to “conclusively prove he was sober”. Lacking evidence either way, there is a presumption of innocence. FWIW, the initial crash was recorded by Logan PDs dash cams, and the victim did not, from my perspective, appear to have done anything wrong at all.
I believe the reason they pushed so hard for the blood sample was that they were trying to protect their own department from any impending lawsuits from the crash victim. The Logan PD / UHP were chasing the Silverado when it crashed into the victim’s semi, and I believe fearing a lawsuit from the victim, were attempting to obtain something with which to cast aspersions on him and make him look bad. I think they were hoping that the blood sample would show some intoxicant so that they could claim the semi driver was at fault in the accident and avoid or minimize their own department’s liability for the pursuit and subsequent crash that left the victim maimed.
My brother and sister both work with Detective Payne. Neither one of them had good things to say about him. His Lieutenant also deserves a good bit of blame, and unfortunately he appears to be escaping much responsibility for the part he played in this fiasco.
I also believe SLC PD was attempting to sweep the whole thing under the rug. He was still on active duty until this video was released by the nurse and her lawyer.
I’m always happy to consider alternative explanations for seemingly obvious situations (witness the “jogger push” thread), but in this case, no.
The law was 100% on the side of the nurse and the officer was 100% wrong. The rules were clear.
I can understand a degree of frustration from the officer but I cannot for the life of me see how his preferred resolution to this is “arrest her”. What exactly does that accomplish? It gets him no nearer to a blood sample.
Someone who lets their frustration boil over in a situation which is neither violent nor dangerous and is ignorant of basic protocol, IMHO, doesn’t belong in uniform. Let’s hope he gets fired.
And full marks to the nurse for her mature and measured response to this, both at the time and in the aftermath. I’d rather have her as police officer.