Nurse Alex Wubbels arrested and assaulted for obeying the law
To Salt Lake City, where police detective Jeff Payne intends to take blood from an injured man undergoing treatment at the University of Utah Hospital’s burns unit. To remove blood you need the patient’s consent. But he’s out cold. What to do, then? The injured man is not under arrest. But Payne wants that blood. So he tells Nurse Alex Wubbels to take it. She refuses. Wubbels seeks advice. Her supervisor tells her not to take the blood – doing so would mean breaking the law. But Detective Payne disagrees.
So he grabs her, bundles her outside, pushes her against a wall and slaps her in handcuffs. A host of other overweight, unsympathetic cops look on. Thankfully, one of them films the whole assault on a body camera.
The Washington Post has more:
Nurse Alex Wubbels politely stood her ground. She got her supervisor on the phone so Payne could hear the decision loud and clear. “Sir,” said the supervisor, “you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse.”
Payne snapped. He seized hold of the nurse, shoved her out of the building and cuffed her hands behind her back. A bewildered Wubbels screamed “help me” and “you’re assaulting me” as the detective forced her into an unmarked car and accused her of interfering with an investigation.
The explosive July 26 encounter was captured on officers’ body cameras and is now the subject of an internal investigation by the police department, as the Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday. The videos were released by the Tribune, the Deseret News and other local media.
On top of that, Wubbels was right. The U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that blood can only be drawn from drivers for probable cause, with a warrant.
Wubbels, who was not criminally charged, played the footage at a news conference Thursday with her attorney. They called on police to rethink their treatment of hospital workers and said they had not ruled out legal action.
Salt Lake police says Detective Payne is still on active duty – sleep easy, people – but that he has been “suspended” from the department’s blood draw unit.
Posted: 4th, September 2017 | In: Key Posts, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
