Last few days the local news has been blowing up over the release of body cam footage showing a cop arresting a nurse. In the end, who’s in trouble here? The cop. Oh, boy howdy, the cop. Every bus the governor, mayor and chief of police can find, they’re preparing to throw him under… and for good reason. Here’s the short form:
1: On July 26, there was a high speed pursuit. The idjit being chased managed to hit a semi truck near Wellsville, resulting in an impressive explosion; idjit was killed, truck driver – who *everyone* acknowledges was doing nothing wrong – was injured.
2: Injured truck driver was taken to University Hospital in Salt Lake City.
3: For some reason, detective Jeff Payne decided that he needed to have a blood sample from the unconscious truck driver, and he needed it Right Now. Presumably this was to test for booze or drugs or some such in the truck driver… reason able enough, I suppose, under the circumstances, but his need fr it seems to have been excessive.
4: On-duty nurse Alex Wubbels knew the law and Hospital policy: they’re not allowed to draw blood from a patient for the cops unless:
A: The patient consents – which he couldn’t, being unconscious.
B: The patient was under arrest, which he wasn’t.
C: The police have a valid search warrant calling for a blood sample… which they didn’t have (but could have obtained easily enough)
5: Detective Payne was having none of it, and threatened the nurse with arrest for obstruction of justice.
6: Nurse contacts her supervisor via cell phone with a speakerphone
7: Supervisor tells the detective that the nurse is right, and that he’s making a mistake in threatening the nurse.
8: Detective goes ape and aggressively arrests the nurse.
9: In the end no charges are filed because, duh, nurse broke no laws
10: And then in late August the bodycam footage is released to the public and the detectives career hits a bit of a speedbump.
The truck driver patient is reportedly a reserve police officer in Rigby, Idaho; the going assumption is that detective Payne wanted that blood sample Right Friggen’ Now in order to absolutely clear the reserve police officer of any taint of guilt in the incident (even though, again, there’s no suspicion that anyone but the original idjit was responsible for the crash). The truck river is still in the hospital in serious condition.
Oy.
Video shows Utah nurse screaming, being handcuffed after refusing to take blood from unconscious victim
And so now…
SLC mayor, police chief apologize for officer who arrested nurse; criminal investigation to follow
Ruh-roh, Raggy.
Here’s the full near-19-minute footage.
Hard to come up with a better representation of detective Payne than this…
Here are some other angles: