Shitty cop in Utah manhandles and arrests nurse for doing her job:
Via Deseret News:
Payne, a veteran Salt Lake police officer, was sent to the hospital by another police agency to get vials of blood for the investigation. But because the patient was not a suspect in the crash nor faced potential criminal charges, because he was unconscious and unable to give consent, and because the officer did not have a warrant, Wubbels [the nurse] — one of the supervisors that night — did not allow him to draw blood.
“If they needed blood, then they needed to go through to proper channels to take it,” she said.
In the body camera video, Wubbels is seen on her phone with numerous supervisors advising them of what was happening and getting confirmation about the policy. Payne sounds impatient in the video and continues to threaten to arrest her.
Wubbels, who is surrounded by other hospital staffers, explains in the video that she is doing what her bosses told her to do. She eventually prints out a copy of the policy for blood draws — one that Salt Lake police agreed to more than a year ago, according to Porter — and shows it to the officer.
Wubbels said close to 10 supervisors were consulted either directly by herself or by the supervisors checking with their own superiors.
But Payne insists he, too, is following orders.
“I’m doing what I’m being told by my boss, and I’m going to do what my boss says,” Payne says sternly at one point in the recording.
Wubbels can be seen trying to tell Payne to calm down while telling her boss on the phone that Payne was threatening to arrest her, and that a University of Utah police officer who was present wasn’t going to stop him.
“She’s going to jail,” Payne says in the video.
“Why?” a hospital staff member asks.
“Interfering with a criminal investigation,” Payne replies.
Turns out the nurse was right and the cops were wrong. A SLC police sergeant admitted in the article that the department’s blood-draw policy “hadn’t been updated for a little bit” before the incident. Officer Payne was wrong to arrest Wubbels, and Payne’s supervisor was wrong to direct him to do so.
But the truly disturbing thing was how Payne went all HULK SMASH on Wubbels, evidently enraged by her polite refusal to immediately obey. He charged at her, tried to bat the phone out of her hand, pinned her arms, cuffed her and wrestled her out of the building. It was completely unnecessary. She wasn’t resisting arrest — she was responding as any normal human would to an assault by a lunatic.
After the nurse is handcuffed and strapped into the seat of Payne’s cruiser, the other cop delivers an incredibly condescending lecture to Wubbels, of the “why were you wearing such a short skirt” variety. A longer video clip captures that part of Wubbels’ ordeal.
According to the Deseret, Payne is off the blood-draw squad but is still on active duty. The department is receiving training on blood-draw regulations so they’ll stop asking medical professionals to violate the law.
That’s not good enough. Payne should be fired since he clearly doesn’t have the temperament to handle his job, and the department should receive anger management training to weed out other Paynes.
The whole thing is outrageous but unsurprising. After viewing news reports about justifiable public anger and largely peaceful demonstrations to protest the killing of unarmed black men and children, 64 million assholes voted in a “law-and-order” mega-asshole, in part as a big FUCK YOU to anyone who objects to extrajudicial executions by police.
And mega-asshole is delivering, “joking” to an audience of cops just the other day about roughing up people they’ve placed under arrest. I suspect Officer Payne heard him loud and clear.