"“The Rigby Police Department would like to thank the nurse involved and hospital staff for standing firm, and protecting Officer Gray’s rights as a patient and victim. Protecting the rights of others is truly a heroic act,” the department’s post said.
The department also explained how Gray came to be in the hospital, stating: “On July 26th of this year, one of our reserve officers, William Gray was the victim in a horrific accident in northern Utah while working his full-time job as a truck driver.”
“The suspect in this incident was fleeing from Utah State Highway Patrol, when he crossed into oncoming traffic and collided head on with Gray’s truck, severely injuring Gray, and killing himself. Officer Gray was flown to the University of Utah’s burn unit where he remains under their watchful, professional, and competent care,” the post added."
TLDR version: The guy they were trying to get blood from was a cop and a victim and was not ever a suspect in a crime.
So yeah, criminal charges against Mr. Power Mad just became a lot more likely.
I think this kind of incident shows that it’s not just a ‘few bad apples’ - there was a person illegally handcuffing and arresting a woman for following the law, and none of the other cops on the scene did anything to stop him because he also wore blue. If this kind of incident was really a case of a ‘few bad apples’ instead of a major institutional disregard for the rule of law, his fellow officers should have stopped him and arrested him at the scene, and the department shouldn’t have backed him, and definitely shouldn’t have waited weeks to change the policy to comply with the law.
Thanks to those who corrected me. Having read the updated articles, the situation was very different than I had initially supposed.
The one very overweight man in uniform was on the phone and seemed to be trying to get help. I couldn’t tell if he was a cop or hospital security.
As I understand it, in police organizations the Detectives outrank the police officers. He may well have been the ranking officer on site and therefore the others would have been risking their livelihoods if they’d tried to countermand him.
The most ironic part, is that if the nurse had complied with his order, then he would have had good reason to arrest her.
This is totally relevant. She recognized that if she let the officer perform this blood-draw, it’d make it far easier for police to violate patient rights in even more severe ways. She knows her way around a slippery slope.
The CEO of the hospital announced that university attorneys are looking at possible actions:
At the same press conference:
The nurse made this public because she felt the university police weren’t taking it seriously enough. Neither the Salt Lake police chief nor the University of Utah police chielf looked at the body cam footage until it became national news. You have to wonder how much there will be changes until complaints are taken more seriously before videos go viral.
I think if we give someone a badge and a gun and the unilateral ability to apply legal force that provides, we should damn well expect they know what their job is. If we’re going to give these people the presumption of truth and the ability to kill people without due cause, good reason, or consequence, we should damn well be able to expect that they know how to do their damn jobs without screwups like this.
One bad apple spoils the bunch, that was the proverb. ‘A few bad apples’ and the idea that they don’t represent anything is some recent thing that contradicts the old wisdom and doesn’t make any sense.
In the opening minutes of this video, pre-arrest, it’s incredibly tense and the arresting officer is already the problem shithead on the scene. Security and at least one other cop seem to know this, and that at least gives me hope.
Here is a legal analysis by a professor of law at the University of Utah.
And further along
However, if the police had actually been bothered enough to read the damn law, the very one they were relying on to arrest the nurse, they could see that
my bolding
The officer had no grounds to believe the driver was in violation of the provision. None. Zero. Zip. All the officer was interested in was well, as the article says
