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Video shows Utah nurse screaming, being dragged into police car after refusing to let officer take blood from unconscious victim
Salt Lake Tribune

URL: http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/31/u ... us-victim/
Category: Police
Published: August 31, 2017

Description: A nurse says she was assaulted and illegally arrested by a Salt Lake City police detective for following a hospital policy that does not allow blood draws from unconscious patients.



Footage from University Hospital and officer body cameras shows Detective Jeff Payne and nurse Alex Wubbels in a standoff over whether the policeman should be allowed to get a blood sample from a patient who had been injured in a July 26 collision in northern Utah that left another driver dead. Wubbels says blood cannot be taken from an unconscious patient unless the patient is under arrest, unless there is a warrant allowing the draw or unless the patient consents. The detective acknowledges in the footage that none of those requirements is in place, but he insists that he has the authority to obtain the draw, according to the footage. At one point, Payne threatens to take Wubbels to jail if he doesn’t get the sample, and he accuses her of interfering with a criminal case. “I either go away with blood in vials or body in tow,” Payne says. After Wubbels consults with several hospital officials and repeats the policy, Payne tells her she is under arrest and grabs her, pulling her arms behind her back and handcuffing her. The footage shows the detective dragging Wubbels out of the hospital and putting her inside a patrol car as she screams, “Help! Help! Somebody help me! Stop! Stop! I did nothing wrong!”


A University of Utah police officer and Department of Public Safety officers, who provide security for the hospital, were present at time of the arrest and did not intervene. 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. Parts of the footage were shown Thursday at a news conference at the office of Karra Porter, a Salt Lake City attorney representing Wubbels. Salt Lake police Sgt. Brandon Shearer said the department started an internal investigation, which is ongoing, in response to the incident. 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. In a written report, Payne said he was responding to a request from Logan police to get the blood sample, to determine whether the patient had illicit substances in his system at the time of the crash. Payne explained the “exigent circumstances and implied consent law” to Wubbels, but, according to his report, she said “her policies won’t allow me to obtain the blood sample without a warrant.” Payne — who says he wanted the blood sample to protect the patient, not punish him — said he was advised by Lt. James Tracy, the watch commander on duty that night, to arrest Wubbels for interfering with a police investigation if she refused to let him get the sample, according to his report. Tracy said in his report that he spoke on the phone with Wubbels and told her he believed that they had implied consent to get the sample, but she cut him off and said she would not allow the draw without a warrant. He then went to the hospital and tried to tell the nurse why she was in custody, but “she appeared to not want to hear my explanation,” Tracy wrote. Porter, however, said “implied consent” has not been the law in Utah since 2007, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the Constitution permits warrantless breath tests in drunken-driving arrests, but not warrantless blood tests. She stressed that the patient was always considered the victim in the case and never was suspected of wrongdoing. No claim or lawsuit has been filed, Porter said, but she has had discussions with Salt Lake City police and she believes the department will educate its officers. Wubbels said she has heard anecdotally of other health care workers being bullied and harassed by police, and that these videos prove that there is a problem. “I can’t sit on this video and not attempt to speak out both to re-educate and inform,” she said. Police agencies “need to be having conversations about what is appropriate intervention.” Wubbels, who was not charged, said she has watched the footage four or five times and said, “It hurts to relive it.” She never said “no” when Payne asked to take a blood sample; she merely explained the blood draw policy to him, according to Wubbels, who also said she was trying to keep her patient safe and do things the right way. Porter and Wubbels declined to release information about the patient, but Payne’s report identifies him as 43-year-old William Gray, a reserve officer in the Rigby, Idaho, Police Department, who suffered burns during a July 26 crash in Cache County. Gray is a truck driver when he is not serving as a reserve police officer, according to the Idaho State Journal. At about 2 p.m. on July 26, Gray was driving a semi north on State Road 89/91 near Sardine Canyon when a man fleeing from the Utah Highway Patrol crashed a pickup truck into him head-on, according to Logan police, who investigated the collision. The crash caused an explosion and fire, Logan police have said. Gray was on fire when he exited the semi. The driver of the pickup truck, Marcos Torres, 26, died at the scene. Police have said Torres was fleeing from the UHP after other drivers reported him driving recklessly. On Thursday, Gray was in serious condition at University Hospital, officials there said. Wubbels, an Alpine skier who competed in the Winter Olympics in 1998 and 2002, when her last name was Shaffer, has worked as a nurse at University Hospital since 2009.

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Gehrke: The outrageous arrest of a nurse exposed Salt Lake City police for having bizarrely out-of-date policies
Salt Lake Tribune

URL: http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/09/02/g ... -policies/
Category: Police
Published: September 1, 2017

Description: Alex Wubbels is a champion ski racer and competed in the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics. But it’s hard to imagine she has ever seen things go downhill faster than they did when Detective Jeff Payne roughed her up and arrested her for simply doing her job. The body camera footage of Wubbels’ arrest has made national headlines and drawn condemnation from around the country, with the social media world demanding Payne be fired from the Salt Lake City police force. One thing is certain: Wubbels earned a gold medal for moxie. She not only knew her job as a nurse, but she also knew the law and stood up for her patient in the face of a bully with a badge who was trying to conduct a patently unconstitutional blood draw of an unconscious crash victim. Video of the incident is hard to watch as Wubbels, with her supervisor on the phone, calmly tries to explain to Payne that the hospital policy — which happens to reflect a series of clear rulings by state and federal courts — does not allow her to draw blood from an unconscious individual. She stood her ground and for her trouble ended up getting her arms wrenched behind her back, handcuffed and dragged to a patrol car while she pleaded with Payne to stop. “Help! Help! Somebody help me!” she pleaded. “Stop! Stop! I did nothing wrong!” Two University of Utah police officers stood by and did nothing to intervene or try to defuse the situation. Law enforcement veterans I’ve talked to were stunned by the utter failure by both Payne and his supervisor to ratchet down the situation. They found it bizarre that the police policy in the state’s capital city appears to be at least 10 years out of date and nobody on the force has even noticed until now. In 2001, Heather Jo Rodriguez was driving on Main Street in Salt Lake City and made a quick left turn in front of a school bus. The bus smashed her car, killing her passenger. Officers took a blood sample from an IV line doctors had inserted into Rodriguez’s arm and she had a blood alcohol level of 0.39, nearly five times the legal limit and enough to kill in some cases. But the Utah Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that drawing blood is not so urgent that officers shouldn’t first get a warrant, although they allowed the blood results to be used as evidence. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated in Missouri v. McNeely that police have to get a warrant to draw blood without a subject’s consent. And last year, the court reiterated in Birchfield v. North Dakota that “implied consent” was not a basis to demand a blood draw. To be clear, getting a warrant is not a big deal. For years, police have been able to get a judge to sign off on an electronic warrant within 30 minutes or less. The fact that the policy was so outdated and that neither Payne, who had spent more than a decade doing blood draws, and apparently his supervising lieutenant, didn’t know the law was a shocking failure of officer training. It was, in the end, Lt. James Tracy who directed Payne to arrest Wubbels. These are policies that are taught at the police academy, and they should be reinforced on a regular basis, according to law enforcement experts I spoke with, and have been adopted into the policies of other agencies around the state. Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said the department updated its policy manual after the incident with Wubbels. It now says: “Implied consent shall not be utilized as a method for obtaining a blood draw. Officers shall utilize the options of voluntary consent, a search warrant, or a medical draw.” In essence: Wubbels was right; the police were wrong. There is still an implied-consent provision in state law that likely needs to be repealed when the Legislature meets next year. But really, the most astonishing piece of it is how quickly Payne snapped, grabbing Wubbels and shoving the nurse through the door and against the wall, wrenching her arms and slapping her into handcuffs. Salt Lake City police have touted their “de-escalation” training and how it has helped avoid fatal police shootings. But what we saw on the video could easily be shown as an example of how not to respond to an incident. Payne wasn’t being threatened. There was no urgency in resolving the dispute. Wubbels and her supervisor were responding calmly yet firmly in trying to work through the situation when the detective lashed out, using the sort of unjustified force that has to make anyone in law enforcement cringe, because it’s the type of incident that tarnishes the reputation of those who wear the badge. Maybe some good will come from the incident: Salt Lake City has finally brought its policy into this decade, we’ve seen that body cameras can be a useful tool in policing the police, and Friday evening Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski asked the Unified Police Department to conduct an independent criminal investigation into Payne’s response. Payne will be on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. At the very least, he should be suspended and required to receive training to make sure this kind of incident doesn’t happen again. And Brown, the police chief, should ensure all his officers are trained on up-to-date policies. And nurse Wubbels deserves our gratitude. After all, we look to men and women in uniform to protect our civil liberties. In this case, the woman in uniform happened to be wearing nursing scrubs.

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Detective’s body camera confirms that Logan police asked him to back off blood draw before nurse’s arrest
Salt Lake Tribune

URL: http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/09/08/d ... lood-draw/
Category: Police
Published: September 8, 2017

Description: Salt Lake City police Detective Jeff Payne’s body camera footage confirms Logan police Chief Gary Jensen’s assertion that his officers did not push to get blood from the victim of a fiery crash in Cache County. Payne ultimately handcuffed and arrested University Hospital nurse Alex Wubbels on July 26 after she refused to allow the blood draw on the grounds that the patient was unconscious and Payne had no warrant. Jensen said one of his detectives investigating the crash told Payne not to worry about pushing for the blood draw because Logan could get the blood through other means. He said Logan officers didn’t initially realize the crash victim, 43-year-old William Gray, was unconscious and thus unable to consent to a blood draw. “My investigator [tells Payne], ‘Hey, don’t worry about it, we’ll go another route. No worries,’” Jensen told The Salt Lake Tribune Wednesday. Footage from Payne’s body cam paints a similar picture of his discussions with Logan police about the blood. As Wubbels sits handcuffed in Payne’s patrol car nearby, Payne and his watch commander, Lt. James Tracy — who ordered Payne to get the blood in the first place — confer about the escalating situation. Tracy says he has just learned that the hospital routinely takes blood from patients such as Gray upon arrival. So he suggests that they tell Logan police to seek a warrant in order to obtain the hospital’s existing blood sample from Gray. “So, I think what we‘ll do is ... this isn’t even our case, I’m tired of dealing with it ... we’ll call Logan back, and we’ll tell them, hey —” Payne interrupts him: ”I’ve already talked to them a couple times.” “Are they pissed [we can‘t get the blood]?” asks Tracy. No, Payne says. “I think we‘re going to release [Wubbels],” Tracy says. ”And we’re going to tell her ... charges are going to be screened on it. Actually, what we’re going to tell her, because I don’t even want to write this [incident] up —” “We got to [write it up],” Payne corrects him. Several times in the conversation, the fact that Payne‘s body camera is turned on is mentioned. “No, I mean I do [want to write it up],” Tracy quickly says. Later, after formulating their plan for releasing Wubbels and calling Logan police back, Tracy says: ”Let’s just do that and get the hell out of here.”



Jensen said his detective had talked to Payne about the situation before Payne arrested Wubbels. He said his department had no recordings of the call between the two. Jensen, who for 25 years also took blood draws along with his officer duties, said it is routine to seek blood from everyone involved in a fatal car crash. The crash involving Gray, a truck driver and reserve police officer from Rigby, Idaho, occurred on U.S. 89/91 near Sardine Canyon, when a man fleeing the Utah Highway Patrol crashed a pickup truck into Gray’s semi head-on. That man, Marcos Torres, 26, died at the scene. While Logan police could have sought a medical subpoena to get Gray’s blood that was collected by the hospital, Jensen said, they didn’t. Police decided that they did not need Gray’s blood to proceed with the crash investigation, the chief said. He added that there is solid evidence about what occurred — including UHP dash camera footage showing Torres swerving directly into Gray’s semi. The crash remains under investigation.



Jensen said he worked with Payne for several years, when they were both deputies and paramedics for the Davis County Sheriff’s Office early in their careers. “I’ve worked with him on a number of occasions, but I don’t know why — especially after we said we’ll go in another direction — why [Payne and Tracy] felt compelled to continue,” Jensen said. Salt Lake City police spokesman Sgt. Greg Wilking said Friday that Chief Mike Brown decided to take Payne off the blood draw team — but not to place him on administrative leave. The next morning, Assistant Chief Tim Doubt watched the body camera video of the encounter, according to Salt Lake City police spokeswoman Christina Judd. Later in the day, Judd said, Doubt and several legal staffers met with hospital officials and University of Utah police Chief Dale Brophy to apologize and to discuss policies to prevent a similar encounter from occurring again. Payne and a second officer — believed to be Tracy — should have been placed on administrative leave immediately, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski said in a list of frequently asked questions she presented to the City Council on Tuesday. The department’s decision to delay the move until Sept. 1, the day after Wubbels and her attorney released the footage of the arrest, was ”regrettable,” Biskupski said.


Biskupski spokesman Matthew Rojas said Thursday that policies are being developed to keep the mayor in the loop when similar incidents occur in the future. Biskupski has said she was not aware of the encounter until she saw the video on Facebook last week. Biskupski’s chief of staff, Patrick Leary, had early on been broadly informed of the arrest at the hospital, Rojas said, but he ”had no idea of the extent of it.” Three investigations are underway: one by the police department’s internal affairs division, one by the department’s civilian review board and one by Salt Lake County’s Unified Police Department. On Thursday, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill announced that he was asking the FBI to also assist on the criminal probe. Meanwhile, the police department and mayor’s office are continuing efforts to combat an onslaught of public criticism since the video was released a week ago. On Thursday, police Chief Mike Brown appeared on the KUER program RadioWest. Brown said he was ”alarmed” and “concerned” after seeing the video for the first time last week, though he also added that the incident was an “outlier” that should not reflect on the rest of his department. He said he has tried to stay insulated from the various investigations, especially the internal affairs probe, because he will ”make the final decision,” after those investigators present their findings to him. The host, Doug Fabrizio, asked how much damage the episode had done to the department’s reputation. “It hurts. We got a black eye,” Brown said. ”We worked so hard for the past couple years through our training and outreach and everything we’ve done — to take this on the chin? We’ll make it better, but it hurts.”

'Stop! I’ve done nothing wrong': Nurse shares police video of 'crazy' arrest by S.L. officer
Desert News

URL: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8656 ... ficer.html
Category: Police
Published: August 31, 2017

Description: SALT LAKE CITY — Alex Wubbels said she couldn't believe what was happening. "This is crazy. This is crazy. Why is he so angry?" she is heard on body camera video, nearly in tears, as she is being arrested by Salt Lake police detective Jeff Payne. Wubbels was working her shift as a charge nurse, or a liaison between patients and doctors and hospital managers, at University Hospital's Burn Unit when she was handcuffed in the middle of her work area, pulled outside and put into a police patrol car for about 20 minutes. She was arrested after refusing to give Payne vials of blood that he needed for an investigation because she said he did not have a warrant or meet any of the mandatory criteria needed for taking blood.



Wubbels was later released and no charges were ever filed against her. But now, Wubbels and her attorney, Karra Porter, want the public to hear her story and see the disturbing body camera video. On Thursday, Wubbels held a press conference to show the video and called for better training of police officers so that "harassment," as she calls it, of hospital doctors and nurses stops. "I just feel betrayed, I feel angry. I feel a lot of things. And I am still confused. I’m a health care worker. The only job I have is to keep my patients safe. A blood draw, it just gets thrown around there like it’s some simple thing. But blood is your blood. That’s your property. And when a patient comes in in a critical state, that blood is extremely important and I don’t take it lightly,” she said. The July 26 incident was caught on the body cameras of Payne and another officer. "Stop! I’ve done nothing wrong," Wubbels cries out in the video as she's being handcuffed. "This is unnecessary."


The incident began when a truck driver was severely burned in a head-on crash with a vehicle that was fleeing from police in Cache County and crossed into on-coming traffic. The driver of the fleeing vehicle was killed. The truck driver was sedated and in a comatose state when he arrived at the hospital. 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 — 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. At one point, Wubbels is heard telling her supervisor that she does not feel safe, before telling Payne, "I don’t know why you're being threatening." "Sir, you’re making a huge mistake right now," a supervisor is heard telling Payne right before he places Wubbels in handcuffs. "I’m leaving now, with her," Payne declares after being told again he can't have the blood without a warrant. She was taken out of the hospital and put in a police car.


Porter said Payne argued that he was allowed to take the blood through a process known as "implied consent." But she said that law was changed years ago. "The law is well-established. And it’s not what we were hearing in the video,” Porter said. "I don’t know what was driving this situation." After handcuffs are later taken off of Wubbels, several hospital staff members are seen hugging her in the video outside the police car. She said she has seen the video four or five times, and still gets emotional each time she watches it, as she did on Thursday. Salt Lake Police Sgt. Brandon Shearer said Thursday that Chief Mike Brown has seen the video and called it "very alarming." Payne is still on active duty with the department, but Shearer said he has been suspended from the blood draw program and an active internal investigation is underway. Shearer also admitted that the department's blood-draw policy "hadn't been updated for a little bit" when the incident occurred. But since then, the policy has been changed and training is scheduled to make sure all officers are up to date on the policy, he said. When asked what she thinks should happen to Payne, Wubbels was reserved in her comments, only stating, "I think he needs some serious training." Porter said what is just as disturbing are comments caught on Payne's body camera video while he was talking to another officer. Payne can be heard talking about his other job as an ambulance driver, and how Wubbels' arrest might affect that. "I’ll bring 'em all the transients and take the good patients elsewhere," he is heard saying about the hospital. "Even if he’s joking, this is not funny," Porter said. "I mean, there are so many things wrong with that statement I can’t even begin.” Wubbels has not filed any civil action against the police agencies involved. "I think right now, I believe in the goodness of society. I want to see people do the right thing first and I want to see this be a civil discourse. And if that’s not something that’s going to happen and there is refusal to acknowledge the need for growth and the need for re-education, then we will likely be forced to take that type of step. But people need to know that this is out there,” she said. Porter complimented Salt Lake City for listening to her client's concerns and stepping up to the plate. But Porter could not say the same for the University of Utah police, whose officer condoned what was happening by not stepping in, she said. "We don’t have confidence that changes will be made at University of Utah police … unless we went forward in this way,” Porter said Thursday. A call placed to the U. police department was not immediately returned Thursday. Wubbels, whose maiden name is Alex Shaffers, was a two-time Olympian in alpine skiing, competing in the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics. She credits the toughness she learned from being an Olympic athlete for getting her through the ordeal.

Utah nurse claims police assault after she refused patient blood sample
Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-utah- ... SKCN1BC57X
Category: Police
Published: September 1, 2017

Description: (Reuters) - A nurse at a Utah hospital was assaulted by a police officer last month after declining to allow him to obtain a sample of an unconscious patient’s blood because he had neither a warrant nor the patient’s consent, local media reported. Prosecutors in Utah will consider criminal charges against the officer, an official said on Friday. Video of the July 26 incident from Salt Lake City police officers’ body-worn cameras showed Alex Wubbels, dressed in blue medical scrubs, consulting with colleagues before showing the waiting officers a printout of the University of Utah Hospital’s policy on providing blood samples to test for alcohol or drugs. The patient was a truck driver who was comatose when he was brought to the hospital burns unit after a crash with a vehicle being driven by someone fleeing police, the Deseret News reported. Wubbels explained to the officers that under the policy, which she said was agreed to by the police department, she would need a warrant, the patient’s consent or the patient would need to be under arrest. “I‘m just trying to do what I‘m supposed to do, that’s all,” Wubbels told the officers, noting that they did not meet any of those criteria. One officer, identified in media reports as Detective Jeff Payne, appeared angered and grabbed at Wubbels before gripping her around her torso. “We’re done,” Payne said. “You’re under arrest.”


Karra Porter, Wubbels’ lawyer, said at a news conference on Thursday where the video was shown that the nurse followed the law and the police were wrong, according to the Deseret News. Wubbels said her first duty was to her patients. Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill agreed with police that a criminal investigation of the officer is warranted, chief deputy district attorney Jeff Hall said in a telephone interview. He declined to say what charges may be filed. Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said in a statement on Friday that he was “alarmed” by the video and that the department had apologized. Payne was suspended from blood-collecting duties while an internal investigation was being conducted, Brown said. Payne was not immediately available for comment. In a separate statement, Mayor Jackie Biskupski called the incident “completely unacceptable” and extended an apology to Wubbels for her ordeal. A protest was planned for Saturday by Utah Against Police Brutality, according to a local Fox affiliate reporter, citing a statement from the group. “Payne is clearly incapable of even basic moral reasoning, and he must be fired,” the statement posted on Twitter said. The University of Utah said in a statement on Thursday that it supported Wubbels “and her decision to focus first and foremost on the care and well-being of her patient.” The hospital said it had created a new policy with police that would preclude officers from arriving in person to seek blood samples.

Nurses Condemn Police Assault on Utah Hospital RN for Advocating for an Unconscious Patient
National Nurses United

URL: http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/pre ... ng-for-pt/
Category: Police
Published: September 1, 2017

Description: ‘Yet Another Case of Hospital Workplace Violence – Setting a Chilling Example When Done by Law Enforcement,’ Nurses Say


National Nurses United today criticized the actions of Salt Lake City police officers for assaulting and arresting a University of Utah registered nurse for advocating for an unconscious patient in late July. In a press conference yesterday RN Alex Wubbels, released a video and described how she was assaulted and arrested and handcuffed by police, even after a hospital supervisor confirmed to the officers she was in full compliance with hospital policy for refusing to allow police to take a blood sample from an unconscious patient without his consent. “The first job of a registered nurse is always to protect and advocate for her patient, period,” said Jean Ross, RN, co-president of National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of RNs, calling the police actions “outrageous.” “As the videos and news accounts make clear, there is no excuse for this assault, or her arrest, which sends a chilling message about the safety of nurses and the rights of patients,” Ross said. “At a time of a growing problem of workplace violence against RNs and other hospital employees, it is especially appalling to see police assaulting an RN for properly, and legally, doing her job,” said Ross. “It is particularly disgraceful to see violence in a hospital perpetrated by a law enforcement officer against a registered nurse who is advocating for her patient.” According to news reports, the patient was a truck driver severely injured when rammed by a suspect fleeing a police chase. The police then came to the hospital demanding a blood sample from the injured, unconscious truck driver. The videos show that Wubbels provided the police a print out of hospital policy clearly stating that a blood sample can not be taken without patient consent, a warrant, or if the patient is under arrest. Her hospital supervisor then confirmed the policy to police via a cell phone. The hospital policy has been affirmed by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2016. “Sir, you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse,” Wubbels’ supervisor is heard telling the police over the phone. The officer, Detective Jeff Payne, then tried to swat the phone out of Wubbels’ hand, roughly grabbed her, shoved her out of the building, handcuffed and arrested her. NNU is sponsoring a national campaign to stem the growing epidemic of hospital workplace violence, charging all hospitals should maintain comprehensive programs emphasizing prevention and education, similar to a precedent setting law in California requiring prevention, now in force, that was sponsored by NNU affiliate, the California Nurses Association. In a letter to NNU in January, outgoing Assistant Secretary of Labor David Michaels announced that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) granted an NNU petition calling for a national standard for a comprehensive workplace violence standard in healthcare. “Workplace violence is a serious occupational hazard that presents a significant risk for healthcare and social assistance workers,” wrote Michaels. OSHA would then be charged with creating the national standard, but no subsequent action has been taken under the Trump administration’s Department of Labor. Workers in the healthcare and social assistance industry face extremely high rates of workplace violence. In 2014, 52 percent of all the incidents of workplace violence reported to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) occurred against workers in the healthcare and social assistance industry. And the rates have been increasing; between 2005 and 2014, rates of workplace violence incidents have increased 110 percent in private industry hospitals.

Issue Spotter: How Many Cops Need To Be Fired Based On These Facts?
Above the Law

URL: http://abovethelaw.com/2017/09/how-many ... eed-to-go/
Category: Police
Published: September 1, 2017

Description: If you answer 'one,' you fail. YOU are part of the problem.
There are going to be a lot of calls today to fire Detective Jeff Payne. Payne was caught on a body camera harassing, assaulting, and arresting a nurse in Utah who refused to let him violate the Fourth Amendment. Payne wanted to draw blood from an unconscious, badly burned hospital patient, without a warrant. Nurse Alex Wubbels told him “no,” then start sobbing as Payne did what cops do when they don’t get their way. Thankfully, Alex Wubbels is white so we can nationally agree that Wubbels was blameless and just doing her job. A black nurse would be told that she was “rude” or “uppity” to the officer and, while “technically correct” about the law, she got what she probably deserved. But anyway, the Washington Post frames Payne’s actions like this:

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.

That’s the mainstream narrative. Payne “snapped.” Payne is a “bad apple.” BOO, DETECTIVE PAYNE. Please. Payne may have acted a bit aggressively, but he was well within the bounds of normal terrorist behavior. When you get in the way of these people — the police — you can expect this kind of reaction. Frustrated cops respond within a range of: overt threats of extra-judicial harassment, to murder. The assault and false imprisonment Wubbels received is WELL WITHIN normal parameters (though, because again she’s white, she might not have known that). Wubbels can be heard on the video saying “help, help” and “this is crazy.” She sounds like a woman who spends a lot of time swimming with killer whales, just realizing that she’s swimming with killer whales. Cops assault people, she’s lucky they didn’t kill her. Welcome to the world you’ve been living in all this time. Detective Payne should be ARRESTED. He is a criminal. We have video evidence of his crime. Payne doesn’t just need to be fired, he needs to go to JAIL. But who is going to arrest him? Another cop? See, if you want to solve this problem (and I’ll note, YOU DON’T, because secretly you’re willing to suffer the occasional murder and constitutional violation so long as you feel “safe”), you have to arrest ALL THE OTHER COPS in this story that aided and abetted Payne’s behavior.
* Was Payne filming himself? No. He’s got a partner who actually has his body cam on. The sidekick’s legal contribution to the situation was “So why don’t we just write a search warrant?” Payne, — “snapped,” “bad apple” Payne — has to be the one to tell this dimwit that they don’t have probable cause for a search warrant. The cop that didn’t assault the nurse was eager to violate the Constitution in hopes that the nurse would fall for it. When she didn’t (because Alex Wubbels seems to know her stuff), who knows what he would have done to her. In any event, the partner did NOTHING to stop Payne from roughing up a woman. He watched the crime go down and did nothing. FIRE HIS ASS.
* “Another officer arrives and tells her she should have allowed Payne to collect the samples he asked for. He says she obstructed justice and prevented Payne from doing his job.” FIRE HIS ASS.
* Payne claims that his lieutenant “ordered him to arrest Wubbels if she refused to let him draw a sample.” That’s an allegation but if true, FIRE HIS ASS.
* “Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown had seen the video and called it “very alarming,” according to the Deseret News.” After the video surfaced, a police spokesperson said, get this: “Payne had been suspended from the department’s blood draw unit but remained on active duty.” FIRE POLICE CHIEF MIKE BROWN. That’s the most obvious call of all. He’s got an officer who got out constitution-ed by a BURN VICTIMS NURSE, and responded by falsely imprisoning her, and all he can think of to say is “very alarming” while keeping the joker on active duty? FIRE HIS ASS FIRST.
I don’t see one bad apple, I see at least five officers who need to lose their jobs and one who needs to be put in jail, and that’s BEFORE a thorough investigation into the department’s training and procedures has been conducted. If people were serious about stopping police terrorism, this video would lead to a goddamn PURGE. Instead, I wouldn’t bet the change in my couch that anybody but Payne will be held accountable, and Payne’s “accountability” is probably going to be the “full pension parachute” kind. So don’t tell me the cop “snapped.” The cop ACTED LIKE A COP. This is what they do. This is what they’ll continue to do until there is political will for actual police reform.