Absolutely outrageous video has surfaced of Salt Lake City nurse Alex Wubbels being violently arrested for following hospital policy and doing her job at University Hospital. Derek Hawkins of the Washington Post has the breakdown of the scene at the Utah hospital:
By all accounts, the head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit was professional and restrained when she told a Salt Lake City police detective he wasn’t allowed to draw blood from a badly injured patient.
The detective didn’t have a warrant, first off. And the patient wasn’t conscious, so he couldn’t give consent. Without that, the detective was barred from collecting blood samples — not just by hospital policy, but by basic constitutional law.
Still, Detective Jeff Payne insisted that he be let in to take the blood, saying the nurse would be arrested and charged if she refused.
It’s also notable that the unconscious patient they were trying to draw blood from was the victim of an accident, not the driver who caused the accident.
It all started when a suspect speeding away from police in a pickup truck on a local highway smashed head-on into a truck driver, as local media reported. Medics sedated the truck driver, who was severely burned, and took him to the University of Utah Hospital. He arrived in a comatose state, according to the Deseret News. The suspect died in the crash.
Nevertheless, Detective Payne insisted he had “implied consent” and began threatening Wubbels with arrest. After Wubbels held her ground and a hospital administrator can be heard on speaker phone telling Detective Payne he is making a mistake, Payne lunges at Wubbels and drags her outside the hospital in an aggressive, violent arrest. Watch this video from The Salt Lake Tribune, which shows Wubbels reading the policy (and the law) just before she is arrested. Jump below to see the additional body cam footage that shows just how violent Payne was with the arrest.
The body camera video from another officer on the scene shows the complete assault. Note that the other officers standing around seem to be looking at each other, as if they are waiting for someone to step in and intervene. Instead of doing the right thing, they allow the older detective to proceed. The arrest begins at approximately the 6:40 minute of this video. At one point, Detective Payne wonders how this will affect his side job:
As he stands in the hospital parking lot after the arrest, Payne says to another officer that he wonders how this event will affect an off-duty job transporting patients for an ambulance company.
“I’ll bring them all the transients and take good patients elsewhere,” Payne says.
Detective Payne should be immediately terminated from the Salt Lake Police Department and that side job transporting patients to hospital. While Salt Lake City police confirm they are investigating, Payne has thus far only gotten a slap on the wrist:
Payne was suspended from the department’s blood-draw program — where officers are trained as phlebotomists so they can get blood samples — but he remains on duty with the Police Department, Shearer said. The department also has held training for the officers in the program as a result of the incident, he said.
For more Daily Kos community discussion, see jerseyjoew's post on the same topic.