Video RN screaming, dragged into police car d/t refused blood draw on unconscious patient!

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July 31 2017, guy fleeing police crosses median and slams into truck and dies. The truck catches fire severely burning the innocent driver, Mr. Gray, who was taken to SLC University. Police later showed up demanding to the UNCONSCIOUS innocent patient's blood. RN Alex shows them the policy requiring consent, arrest, or a warrant. Hospital administration back up RN Alex. Police aggressively arrest RN Alex and drag her from the hospital.

Officer body cam insanity released today:


NEWSPAPER ARTICLE:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/...at-bars-taking-blood-from-unconscious-victim/

Long video body cam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=hJPVglqR4yM

In this video, the aggressive officer who is also an EMT can be heard saying that he will ensure all the "transients" are brought to this hospitals ED since they won't cooperate after being told the administrators and privacy officer are on their way.

Original Crash (graphic):

Interesting note about Alex, she was a 2x Olympian, US Ski Team member, and national champion is Slalom and GS.
 
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reaper

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Yes, the officer knew he had no legal ground for blood draw, so he tried to bully it. Utah law allows implied consent for blood draw, if subject is legally arrested. This officer stated that the man was not under arrest.

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NPO

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News article link is broken, but I googled it. Much is left out of the video, but this is unwarranted escelation. What a fantastic way to break down PD-Hospital relations than to jump at a nurse to arrest her. A calm arrest, whether just or not, would have been appropriate. He seemingly acted like she was actively resisting when he lunged at her.

Read the whole article online. At the bottom comes what I believe to be the motivation behind this. The unconcious patient was a police officer, and they wanted to blood to clear him of being under the influence.

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reaper

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News article link is broken, but I googled it. Much is left out of the video, but this is unwarranted escelation. What a fantastic way to break down PD-Hospital relations than to jump at a nurse to arrest her. A calm arrest, whether just or not, would have been appropriate. He seemingly acted like she was actively resisting when he lunged at her.

Read the whole article online. At the bottom comes what I believe to be the motivation behind this. The unconcious patient was a police officer, and they wanted to blood to clear him of being under the influence.

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They did not have legal right for blood draw. There was no warrant, pt not under arrest, and pt could not give consent. The officer knew he was wrong and for mad when the Rn showed him the policy and refused to allow the draw.

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NPO

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They did not have legal right for blood draw. There was no warrant, pt not under arrest, and pt could not give consent. The officer knew he was wrong and for mad when the Rn showed him the policy and refused to allow the draw.

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Yes. I'm aware of all of that. Doesn't change my statement.

My point is, arresting someone, and aggressively arresting someone are not mutually exclusive. He just lunged at her and grabbed her. That's not how you arrest someone that's being civil.

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OP
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Summit

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Yes. I'm aware of all of that. Doesn't change my statement.

My point is, arresting someone, and aggressively arresting someone are not mutually exclusive. He just lunged at her and grabbed her. That's not how you arrest someone that's being civil.

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Why do you expect an officer who would arrest a nurse who was following the law, professional rules, ethics, and policy to make the arrest the "right" way?
 

reaper

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Yes. I'm aware of all of that. Doesn't change my statement.

My point is, arresting someone, and aggressively arresting someone are not mutually exclusive. He just lunged at her and grabbed her. That's not how you arrest someone that's being civil.

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I agree with that. But, he should have never been trying to arrest her in the first place. So the guy is an idiot all around!

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NPO

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Why do you expect an officer who would arrest a nurse who was following the law, professional rules, ethics, and policy to make the arrest the "right" way?
I don't. But if he TRULY believed he was right, and he had implied consent, and that she was truly impeding an investigation, and he did have a valid reason to arrest her, a civil arrest would be warranted. The fact that he acted the way he did proves (to me) that he knew he was wrong and was trying to use scare tactics and show the other staff what concequences he is willing to wield. Especially with the transient patient comment. He was delivering punishment, not justice.

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NPO

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I agree with that. But, he should have never been trying to arrest her in the first place. So the guy is an idiot all around!

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Agreed. But officers make bad arrests sometimes, if they believe they are right.

I just don't believe that he thought he was right. I think he was trying to bully his way into the result that he wanted.

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StCEMT

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****ing idiot....had everything literally spelled out for him and it was still beyond comprehension....and then tweedle dee standing there in the background.
 

Alan L Serve

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If this bullycop does this in the ED to a charge nurse who is reading to him what the law says then just imagine what he does to everyone else. He needs to be fired. He needs to have his badge and gun taken away. He needs to be in the psych unit.
 

Alan L Serve

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I saw at least two other cops in the background of the video. Further articles demonstrate one is a university cop and the other is possibly a city cop. In any event they needed to intervene with this bullycop and possibly arrest him.
 

VFlutter

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We are frequently asked by PD for blood draws on accident scenes but usually it isn't an issue when we decline. A few of my colleagues have been threatened with arrest or bullied when refusing. Our primary concern is the medical care of the patient, not collection of forensic evidence.

Even if he believed he was in the legal right you can not expect a medical provider to violate the hospital policy risking their job or licesne. It also says he was part of the blood draw team which trains officers to be phlebotomist. Not clear if she was refusing to do it personally or preventing him from doing it himself. Either way she had the responsibility as a patient advocate to ensure things were done appropriately.


Apparently the officer also has a second job with an ambulance transport company and on the video says to another officer that he wouldn't bring the ER any more good patients, just homeless. This guy should lose both jobs. He clearly lacks the ethics for either.
 

Carlos Danger

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If this bullycop does this in the ED to a charge nurse who is reading to him what the law says then just imagine what he does to everyone else.

This. Think about it.

I know this forum and EMS in general tends to be very pro-LE, but the reality is that cops these days are out of control.
 

Tigger

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This. Think about it.
Certainly yes. There is little doubt that this officer is problem and has probably been bullying citizens and others for years. Not to mention that he lacks any sort of ability to descalate the situation as he does the opposite almost immediately. Not to mention that if he was ever involved in a use of force investigation that this video would certainly be pulled and that would not be a good look.

I know this forum and EMS in general tends to be very pro-LE, but the reality is that cops these days are out of control.
I don't understand how you can make this statement based on well, anything. I have been taken to task here and on other boards for calling moron police officers morons, but at no point do I think that this indicative of how the majority of law enforcement acts. Doing your job well is not newsworthy and the fact that social media allows for cell phone videos to be seen by a large audience means that many more people aware of malfeasance than historically so (which is actually a great thing as it hinders law enforcement's ability to alter the narrative on less than well handled events). But that doesn't mean that "cops are out of control," which is just really an unnecessarily inflammatory statement. If you can prove it, by all means.
 

Akulahawk

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My take on this is simple: the cop had zero legal grounds to require a "legal" blood draw so he tried to bully the hospital into providing a blood sample for him. The patient was unconscious so he couldn't give consent, he wasn't under arrest, so it couldn't be collected for evidence that way, and there wasn't a warrant compelling the collection of blood as evidence. While I'm nearly certain the hospital staff knew the patient's BAC, they couldn't release it to the cop absent a warrant because the cop would have been asking for protected info, nevermind the chain of custody issues...

Bottom line is the officer was well out of line, the Nurse in this instance has great grounds to sue the officer in his official capacity, possibly personally as well, and his department and she will likely win. The officer likely will ultimately lose his job and possibly lose his ability to be a Police Officer and due to the ethics of what he did, he may lose his EMT cert as well.

Also, entirely IMHO, it's not that cops are generally getting out of control, it's that because of the widespread availability of cameras, the "bad ones" are far more visible and they're the ones that make the news, not the vast majority of "good cops."
 

reaper

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I know one thing. He screwed up. The nursing boards are exploding over this and they have made this go national overnight. If you ever thought EMS was savage, it can't even compare!!

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E tank

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The brutality and illegitimate nature of the arrest aside, a problem here is that folks do fudge the law and draw blood to either go along in the interests of relationships with the PD or it's just easier to get the blood and move along. Then when someone that makes a legitimate stand comes along, so does the problem because the cops become accustomed to the deferential treatment. This scenario plays out many times a day, short the arrest, with only bad feelings and benign hostile confrontations.

Not this time.

If everyone doesn't follow the rule, the ones that do will look like they're being pr**ks and get hosed.
 
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UPDATES:
1. Payne on paid admin leave, under criminal investigation.
2. Mr. Gray (the burn victim) is also a reserve police officer in ID and his dept has thanked Nurse Alex for standing up for his rights.

I wonder if the UT EMS board should be investigating Payne for attempted battery of a patient and for stating he would use personal vengeance and socioeconomic status determine his patient transport decisions?
 
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