Seeing all the negative camera footage and press lately (and no so lately) about police - specifically the Utah nurse being arrested for following the law…
What would happen if this trend continued and organizations started having security with the explicit orders to defend against the police?
What would be the legal ramifications if an organization’s security confronted a police officer bullying an employee of the organization for following the law?
This scenario still seems farfetched to me…but I live in a world now where the President can and does really want to abuse his powers…where police have been under fire for many years and still can’t get their manure in one central location and may even be getting worse…I can almost see organizations starting to want to defend themselves against the police.
I have been that nurse in the story. Right up to the point where the cop decided to arrest her. That is an aberration not a trend. When it becomes a trend that will be the time to rethink things. Hiring security to protect from the police will not be the way to fix that problem.
I think the University police did exactly what I would expect them to do. They are not the same as the City (or whatever) police.
I personally think that cop should be fired. He cannot control himself in what really should be a low stress situation.
We legally empower police to make arrests. In addition we allow them to use reasonable force to make those arrests. As a society, there’s a reason we do that. If the justification for the arrest is in dispute, or outright wrong, private security threatening force against the police is not a good result that we want to see a lot more of. Those private security essentially put themselves in line to be arrested and potentially sentenced, as well.
Lawyers, as much as I hate saying these words, are the solution that avoids fights over arrests in our streets, businesses and hospitals. Private security would just escalate the problem into something even worse.
Going by the article and the full length video, that LEO chose the wrong path. And had he gotten a blood sample it would have been inadmissible in the end.
Wait, was the police officer demanding to draw the blood sample himself? The article (one of them anyway) seems to mention that he was trained to do that. Or was he demanding that the nurse draw the blood sample?
If the cop was trying to draw the sample himself (and somehow had brought all his own equipment, like a syringe, to do so), and the nurse or hospital staff was trying to prevent him, then the nurse and staff might well have been obstructing an officer. (The shit can all hit the fan after-the-fact.) Is this what was going on? (I didn’t see the video myself.)
If the cop was demanding that the nurse draw the blood, or demanding that the hospital supply him with the syringe to do so, then I can’t imagine why the nurse and hospital would be under any obligation to cooperate with that.
From The Salt Lake Tribune, “Payne is one of about 10 officers who are certified to take blood from people who have been involved in serious crashes or other accidents, or are suspected of driving under the influence, Judd said. They carry their own blood-draw kits, she said, and are often called upon by other police departments, such as Logan, to take blood at Salt Lake City hospitals.”
This officer was asking to draw it himself, but nurses and doctors have been illegally arrested in other cities for refusing to draw blood on behalf of cops.
The detective had no authority to draw blood from that patient. The patient was unconscious, so was unable to give consent. The officer had no warrant to draw blood from him, and the patient was not under arrest.
Officer Payne exceeded his authority. He was operating on his understanding of a law that was a decade out of date. I’m not an attorney, but it’s clear to me that the nurse was not only not interfering with an officer, but had a duty to prevent him from drawing the blood.
The Bill of Rights has its own Preamble (not usually printed, you have to search for it), which says the Amendments are added to prevent the abuse of Constitutional provisions. Those include the right to bear arms, which implies that we have a right to arm ourselves against any abuse of the Constitution’s powers, even if exercised by the police.