To an illegal seizure.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/09/01/health/utah-nurse-arrest-police-video/index.html
How much do you want to bet he doesn’t get charged? Sickening.
The police have forgotten that they work for the public.
She was asking people to help her…oddly, I suspect anyone who had would have been commiting a real crime. Obstruction being the lightest possible charge.
Here’s the full camera feed from one of the other officers: Utah nurse shares police video of 'crazy' arrest by Salt Lake officer - YouTube
If you listen to it, especially the supervising officer, you see it’s much more disturbing. He pretty much demonstrates contempt for civil rights and says the hospital staff should just do what the cops tell them, regardless of hospital policy or what the law says. The supervising officer pretty much refuses to deal with anyone in charge at the hospital, as they won’t be as easy to intimidate as the nurse.
Even more sinister is that the blood they want is from a victim in an accident the police could possibly be held responsible for (he was hit by a suspect they were pursuing); they pretty much are looking for some dirt on the poor guy so they have leverage if he wants to sue. They’re also in a rush to ID the victim, likely so they can look for priors or other leverage.
Seriously. In Trumps new world they are the Gestapo.
I commented about this in a Pit thread. I have nothing un-Pitworthy to say about this walking bag of turds.
I feel bad for this woman but she STILL seems pissed off that no one stepped in and helped her. Not sure what she expected her coworkers to do.
There were multiple other officers there who should know the rules who did nothing.
Good point. That is scary. Given that it is their jobs to enforce the law, the by-standing officers should at the least get a hand slap.
'Bad cop! No donut!"
Right, as I said in the Pit thread, the other police should have known & been able to tell him “no, man, you are being an ass, just get the dagblasted warrant, he’s going nowhere”. They were useless in standing by their fellow LEO no matter what. The civilians can’t be blamed due to the by now well-established norm that anything you do becomes “intefering”, “obstruction” or “resisting” no matter how wrong the LEO may be. The amazing thing is that, as I mentioned there, once he was told “we are not allowed to do that without a warrant” that should have been enough for any trained police officer. An e-warrant could be coughed up quickly if the circumstances supported it and everything would have been fine.
Here is the supposed backstory of what happened.
There was a police chase, and the car being chased caused an accident. The accident victim (the person who was crashed into, not the person being chased) was the one the police wanted to get a blood sample from.
Supposedly the police wanted a blood sample because they were hoping if there were any kinds of drugs, they could blame the accident on the guy who was crashed into, because the cops were afraid they’d be held accountable for the crash (I have no idea what their department policies are for car chases, it varies by state and department).
TL;DR - cops wanted blood to frame an accident victim/innocent bystander to absolve themselves of any responsibility for an accident after a high speed chase. That is why the cops overreacted like this.
They had no grounds to get a warrant, and they knew it. One officer in the video says as much.
This whole thing is highly disturbing. One thing I noticed from the video is a man in a green outfit who pushes a button to activate two automatic doors which open to allow the officer to leave with the nurse. He has a badge and some patches.
Who is this man? Is he a hospital security guard?
Exactly. But given the alternative of, upon being told “you need a warrant” and knowing you got nuthin’ on it, either:
(a): Just scoot away with your badge tucked between your legs; or
(b): Go through the motions and in the end say “oh well, got it denied, sorry for the inconvenience”
…option (b) at least saves face and, Hell, you may even catch an easy magistrate on duty.
No need to make up your own option (c): coerce compiance through bullying. 'cause backing down to a nurse, why, unthinkable.
I think all that a bystander could reasonably do to help her would be to ask senior staff at the hospital to contact a senior supervising police officer to demand that they attend the scene urgently. In the immediate situation, the only person who can correct and deescalate a cop’s misguided actions is a more senior cop.
Is dialing 9-1-1 likely to be productive if it’s the cop’s own actions that are in question? How are 9-1-1 operators trained to deal with complaints about police behavior in “live” situations?
TL;DR baseless conjuncture. You are also leaving out the fact that the victim is a reserve police officer. It’s standard procedure to get blood tests of anyone involved in a fatal crash, even those it appears did nothing wrong. It isn’t something that was arbitrarily decided. Now of course he was wrong about the law since the implied consent law in Utah covering blood samples only cover when the subject is under arrest. He needed a warrant.
But this wasn’t a fatal crash, was it? I know you said he needed a warrant so I’m not sure why you mentioned that.
Yes it was a fatal crash. It was fatal to the other driver.