‘This is crazy,’ sobs Utah hospital nurse as cop arrests her for doing her job | Hacker News Reader

‘This is crazy,’ sobs Utah hospital nurse as cop arrests her for doing her job

washingtonpost.com

93 pointsdankohn177 comments

Saw this on earlier news reports and am flabbergasted at the police response to this.

IMO the nurse was trapped between a rock and a hard place - she had to comply with hospital policy, as well as HIPAA standards or risk losing her licence and/or her job versus complying with a police command.

I'm not a lawyer, so can't comment on whether the request from the police was legally valid or not, but the reaction to grab her and cuff her like that when she was not showing any signs of outward aggression or threats is beyond the pale.

I also heard that the officer has not been disciplined or stood down from duty, only been restricted from collecting blood at the hospital in person again, which doesn't go towards solving the power imbalance and ethical problems here.

Well, the latest here is that the police department has placed the cop on leave, the city attorney general is calling for criminal charges, the mayor has called it unacceptable, both the police department and the citizen's review board are investigating the incident. So that seems like serious responses are happening. Justice might, just possibly, be done.

I think it's disappointing that all this action happened after the video surfaced, though. For a month after the incident, nothing happened. (Or, perhaps, nothing happened that the public heard about.)

Source: https://www.ksl.com/?sid=45637083&nid=148&title=sl-police-de...

The Supreme Court has clearly held that blood draws require a warrant (or consent obviously). Birxhfield v. North Dakota. It’s a 2015 case so the officer was probably just ignorant of it. But the hospital’s official policy should have clued him off. They don’t write those things for funsies.

The hospital administrator told him about the law in the conference call. Also, his stated job is blood collection, that ruling was directly relevant to his work, he should have known it. Also ignorance of the law is no excuse.

"Also ignorance of the law is no excuse."

Alas, it is an excuse for a police officer in the US. A cop performing official duties who acts unlawfully, but the law they're violating has not yet been "clearly established" (TBD), is immune from prosecution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

The hospital's legal team would need to determine if her rights were probably violated, in which case there could be valid challenge to qualified immunity. Furthermore, the situation at present is untenable: cops are getting away with violating people's rights and murder, so reversing key decisions is necessary to preserve a civil society or it all comes crashing down when people are tired of jack-booted thugs running amok and throw it all away.

Whether a right is “clearly established” has nothing to do with the officer’s knowledge, but whether courts have clearly held that the right exists in novel scenarios. The (somewhat misguided, in my opinion) premise is that we don’t want officers philosophizing about abstract legal principles, but rather there has to be appellate or Supreme Court case law they can apply to the situation at hand.

I think the legality of his command is independent of his actions taken as a consequence of it not being followed.

I realize that this is exceptional but i wish we could ask (instead of "what's legal") -- "what do we expect the function of the police to be?"

I'm not criticizing you or HN commenters, Im referring to the community involved. I just can't understand why the police, their unions and their superiors and peers don't ask this.

I've asked this question myself over the last few years and agree that it really needs to be addressed. I believe the truth is that we've created a new tier of government legal authority. The military has become incredibly powerful, while the requirements and danger of of being an officer have skyrocketed. I have no doubt we have a need for both of these positions, but the idea a lower-level peacekeeper existing and taking some/many responsibilities from a modern and militarized police officer interests me.

At the same time, what functions should the police not fulfill that it currently is?

Does anyone know about the Stanford prison experiments?

> danger of of being an officer have skyrocketed

The danger of being a police officer are significantly lower than they have been in the past. The 70s was a high water mark, and 2013 was the lowest point in many years.

The militarized police officer role is not needed. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, mob hits were being carried out in midtown Manhattan at nice restaurants. We didn’t have militarized police back then, we certainly don’t need it now.

"while the requirements and danger of of being an officer have skyrocketed"

As mcphage pointed, this is untrue. You are more likely to die on the job collecting garbage or driving for a living. "Police officer" doesn't even break the top 10 most dangerous US jobs. It's about on a par with "groundskeeper".

It is important to note that the police officer arrested her because his supervisor ordered him to do so if she refuses.

Due to that it is possible that the officer, seeing his job threatened, did not feel he had another choice.

Source of this information: http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/31/utah-nurse-arrested-af... - "Payne [...] 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 [...]"

Pretty sad that the washington post would fail to report such a crucial detail.

The cop's behavior was inexcusable. Even if he had those orders, he could have informed her and arrest her calmly without unecessarily escalating the situation. The loss of temper is a clear sign of him being unfit for duty.

In an ideal world, yes. In practice, in the USA? This is what your policy makers deem "good enough".

Then both him and his supervisor should be fired. It in no way excuses the actions of the officer who knew he was acting illegally, or if he didn't know was not competent to carry out his job duties in the first place.

If you're going to fire every police officer who doesn't know health privacy regulations, you're going to need a bigger line at the unemployment office.

I'd be amazed if there were more than 10 cops nationwide that can correctly answer simple questions about those laws.

When you're a trained phlebotomist as the article states, there is simply no excuse for any negligence surrounding blood withdrawal laws.

The police department would not send someone who is not trained in these laws and protocols or else the chief would be in hot water.

You are making apologies to protect people whose job it is to know how to draw blood according to appropriate health precautions and legal precedents.

Perhaps you're right. The officer certainly could have used a lot more grace in handling the situation.

Still you can't expect police officers to know the law. In western law it is more or less the case that nobody does. We just act, and check afterwards. We do that by attempting to create consensus between at least 3 people (2 -usually- lawyers and a judge). Getting arrested can happen to anyone and doesn't mean anything.

That's theoretical. Practically, I've actually seen the office of a lawyer that took pride in actually having the law in his office. 3 bookcases that each cover an entire wall in his extra-high office were to contain it. He ran out of space in 1993. That did not include either precedents or legal guidelines (the "little" books that are used in most, if not all, practical cases). Just started at constitution and add with whatever congress added.

>you can't expect police officers to know the law

That's a really sad statement. The people enforcing the law should know the law. There is no excuse.

We have very cheap digital storage now. There is no excuse.

Law does not exist outside of interpretation. So I'm not very sure how a storage device would help. For starters, in western (private) law, as long as you don't damage anyone (including the state) you're not doing anything illegal. Even if what you're doing has a law against it. Law only exists between parties that actually interact. Your neighbors do not get to complain to the court that you, say, offered an illegal contract to a tenant, or smoked in a room you agreed in writing not to smoke in. All these principles make law very hard to apply in practice.

You should read some "cases". That's what lawyers call law interpretation documents or legal decisions. The idea is that you get, in a text, all the elements needed to come to a correct legal conclusion, then the task is to find that correct legal conclusion. Simple cases have exactly what you need, more complex ones have a lot of details that are either irrelevant, or worse, need to be weighed against others. For instance, in contract law, the legal decision should always be minimal. An illegal contract will be minimally modified to become legal, not destroyed, for instance (which is why you should never sign a contract that you know is illegal, unless you know exact precedents, surprises will ensue). Good luck predicting what such changes will be, if brought before a court.

In any practical situation, you're not going to have all the facts, and the number of irrelevant facts is going to outnumber relevant facts by a dozen orders of magnitude.

>Law does not exist outside of interpretation. So I'm not very sure how a storage device would help.

You answer your own question with this line:

>You should read some "cases".

I assume you expect me to look these up on some digital storage medium.

>In any practical situation, you're not going to have all the facts

While true in the abstract, it's rather dishonest to apply this concept to the case in the article. Police departments won't send people totally nonversed in phlebotomy law to collect blood samples unless they are not doing their job correctly. If they are not doing their job correctly, they deserve reprimand and correction.

There's a reason that jurisdictions exist. It is to prevent those who have not studied the particulars of a subset of legal code to exercise power in the absence of comprehension of that subset.

> There's a reason that jurisdictions exist. It is to prevent those who have not studied the particulars of a subset of legal code to exercise power in the absence of comprehension of that subset.

I can see why you might think that but jurisdictions exist because law is power, and the ability to use power like the law does only exists in particular geographic locations.

It is an artifact of the fact that law has always been abused, and continues to be, first and foremost by the governments themselves (just try to get a judge to rule against an incumbent telco and compare the results with them ruling against a corner store or market stall. You'll be amazed). That such abuse exists makes it a necessity to fight over it. That, and of course the rewards that can be reaped by doing this.

> It is to prevent those who have not studied the particulars of a subset of legal code to exercise power in the absence of comprehension of that subset.

No police officer has more than a basic introduction to tiny parts of the law.

Just following orders, eh? Bypassing Gowdin for a second, police officers should independently know procedural and constitutional law if they are to execute or impede it.

That his supervisor and colleagues also didn't isn't an excuse.

They can bark out all the demands they want, there are laws to protect the innocent. We are heading down a scary road when a cop can run over The law , do whatever he wants without consequence and throw anyone in jail who gets in his way.. if they genuinely did not have the proper paperwork or formalities in order, then this cop should face disciplinary action. Every instance we overlook like this is seen as an agreement, validating bad behavior.

It was absolutely disgusting. They're acting like the local paramilitary mafia, where they can arrest and even kill people without consequences.

Let us not mince our words. This has a name. More than one. It's called wrongful arrest, wrongful imprisonment and assault, she may (per laws of Utah) very well even have had the right to forceful self defence against the police offer but wouldn't have stood a chance. The perpetrator should be charged and convicted according to the full force of the law, the mayor's apology is meaningless, as it does not compensate for the crime, and is a tactic to prevent a wholesale pitchfork-bearing protest against law enforcement. Paid leave is theft of tax payers money, a compounded obscenity and effectively an evasion of justice and, frighteningly, for the need to state the bleeding obvious, law enforcement is not above the law. The police force conducting an internal (as opposed to an independent commission appointed by the DOJ) investigation adds insult to injury. What is needed is deterrence, i.e. costs for action of this kind. In fact it may be legal for someone to hypothetically with a spine, torque and some unusual but lawful requisite authorisation to arrest the police officer in question for the above crimes. The nurse was manifestly in the right legally, ethically and should be given an award for courage to stand up to someone bigger and stronger than her, who clearly lacks the judgement required for his office, to defend an unconscious patient in her care. This incident portends fascism, which always begin with arbitrary arrests. Dear nurse, let us applaud you for your professionalism, ethics and courage, and let us stand by you as you see the wrongs done to you made right.

Just another cop on an insane power trip, driven to apoplectic rage by the idea that he cannot do whatever he wants to whomever he wants, whenever he wants.

I look forward to his union standing squarely behind him and insisting he did nothing wrong.

"Salt Lake police spokesman Sgt. Brandon Shearer told local media that Payne had been suspended from the department’s blood draw unit but remained on active duty."

Constantly reading things like this makes it extremely difficult to believe the "it's just few a bad apples" comments we always hear.

Cops constantly protecting each other instead of reporting each other makes it very hard to trust the system.

The Blue Wall of Silence

That's because it's not a few bad apples. It's everyone with possibly a few exceptions who still support the bad apples and are therefore bad themselves. In other gangs, there might be members who are not violent but they don't get a break because they're still affiliated with the gang. Well the cops are the biggest, most dangerous gang in America and none of them deserve a break. They are all bad apples supporting one another (see police unions and internal affairs) who don't give a fuck about anything or anyone but themselves. Our society would be better off without these thugs who think and act like they are above the law.

One bad apple can spoil the barrel.

I believe that there is an element that gravitate to this line of work, not all, but a demographic and they are not weeded out.

My hopes and prayers are with this lady’s attorneys. May she get a comically large settlement.

To be honest, I don't think we should be seeking monetary settlements in cases like these, but rather criminal prosecution.

Large settlements are about as good at deterring cops from committing crimes as they are at deterring bankers from committing fraud in the name of the bank, because in either case the "principal" -- person paying the penalty -- is neither the cop nor the banker. Police departments don't care because the money is coming from the taxpayers and not the cops. The banks don't care, because the fine they pay for the fraud is less than the profit taken by the fraud.

Why not both?

Send a message loud and clear that roughing up well-meaning and innocent citizens shall never be tolerated and will be prosecuted with a great risk to one's personal accumulated wealth.

... Out of the cops personal purse of possible.

I'm always more than disappointed by who generally becomes a police officer. I dream of a world where police officers are obsessed with justice and have book clubs in which they discuss Peter Singer and Kant like software engineers might do with GoF for example.

Sometimes, it's the right thing to do to allow yourself to be arrested if it's in defense of others. Especially those who can't defend themselves under you care.

I couldn't believe it when on other forums, people were criticising her for 'screaming' and 'resisting' arrest.

Aside from the fact that there was no obvious reason to arrest her in the first place, she is a NURSE, a carer, on shift, probably working in an understaffed hospital and she had actual patients that needed her care that day. She probably had planned rounds to do and had medication to dispense, drips to change, patients to turn, and a million other things that are critical to keeping human beings cared for, healthy and alive in that environment.

She certainly couldn't do any of that languishing in some filthy jail cell for no reason. To an altruistic person, the fact that they are denied performing their calling can be gut wrenching.

She might have felt strongly -- or she might have been well trained by hospital administrators and legal staff.

And disciplined. The nurse competed in 2 separate Olympics as an Alpine skier. You can get to that level only with some insane amount of discipline and will power.

On a unrelated note: Glad to see the hospital is using a modern OS (Windows 10) and not stuck on XP.

More proof that it takes a white victim for the general public to start noticing abuses that have been standard for minorities.

Your premise doesn't hold up very well. For example, in a given year over 50% more white people are shot and killed by police than eg black people. There's a sizable population difference, which points to the obvious imbalance of abuse by police toward black people, however that's still an immense number of white people getting shot. It would be considered insane in almost any other country. You're underestimating the awareness of the problem by white people, they've noticed the substantial amount of abuse & police militarization going on (which is why so many white people now support doing something about it, from ending the war on drugs to body cameras etc, the majority of white people support these changes).

I think this is an entirely valid point, and I'm disappointed to see it immediately downvoted to oblivion.

If we're serious about ending police abuse of power, we have to make sure they're not abusing anybody. Otherwise people inclined to abuse authority have a training ground where level up their abuse skills.

I don't think this is evidence of that at all. I think the general public has noticed abuses of minorities over the past several years and is appropriately outraged.

The primary change I can see is the ubiquity of cameras. Their emergence and widespread popularity after the turn of the century has brought accountability to the most corrupt and dishonest among the police force. Everyone seems to be outraged at the abuses, whether the victim is minority or not. Unfortunately I think that minorities have suffered much more significantly under the boot of these corrupt authority figures.

Can hospital security neutralise the rogue cop in a case like that?

Legally there may be grounds to attempt it for safety reasons for patients (would have to look at state law most likely); I'm skeptical though, the police seem to always have overruling authority in such instances (for example they can dictate the actions of firemen, arrest them at the scene of a fire if they don't obey commands, etc). In practical terms, either way, trying it could likely be a death sentence (multiple cops were on the scene).

There was an incident here in St. Louis years ago. A fire truck blocked one lane of a major highway to prevent anyone from rear-ending the accident scene and the first responders. A police officer ordered the fire truck driver to move the truck. A fire officer then told the fire truck driver that he was to leave the truck right where it was because it was a safety issue. The fire officer and the police officer exchanged words and the fire officer was arrested and taken away from the scene of an active rescue. So yeah, police arrested the fireman, but later a court case ruled against the police officer and awarded the fire officer $18000.

The fact there were multiple officers on the scene and not one of them stopped the arrest nor de-escalated the situation, nor in fact apparently knew the law betwixt all of them is even more disturbing. At that point it isn't one bad apple. It's a gang.

We need some head crackers as police, unfortunate, yes, but this needs to be balanced by a different kind of personality. Going in guns blazing to every situation isn't the best way to handle things and is the root cause of many of these types of situations. Then the bureaucrat bosses just try to brush it all aside and nothing really gets resolved. We need less of those also.

I think robots are the future of policing. But maybe not fully autonomous robots. More of a remote control type thing. Have people who are cultural sensitive, people who are empathetic, people who understand mental illness, people who understand the nuances of the law all in communication, watching and listening to the situation. See if you can deescalate, resolve, calm things down. If that doesn't work or there is immediate danger to bystanders give control over to the headcracker team. This would reduce costs anyway because right now you are paying grade school bullies to cruise around and interact infrequently with the public. These remote teams could perform a lot more interactions, one level of person could just monitor, perhaps control a number of bots, when the interaction escalates bring in the appropriate team for the situation.

Make policing a work at home job:) Maybe have a Slack channel.

Doesn't matter much if they have the right or not; they probably want to go home to their kids later that night so they'll stay out of it if they value their safety.

No idea about the situation in the US, where there are constitutional rules about this stuff, but here in my jurisdiction in Australia, they fairly recently passed laws making it illegal to resist arrest even if it turns out the arrest was unlawful.

The idea being that the most appropriate place for determining whether an arrest was lawful is in the courts afterwards, as opposed to risking escalation of force at the scene of the arrest, and thus it'll improve safety, or something. I'm not quite sure I buy it, and I suspect our local bar associations may have disagreed too. Though situations of unlawful arrest are fairly rare all things considered, I guess.

That cop belongs in jail. People who enforce the law should be held to higher standards.

But he'll get paid leave, and will be back once it all blows over.

Why does this belong on HN?

Because body cams are the most important technology for freedom of the decade.

This article isn't about body cameras.

You think any of us would ever have heard about this is the cop hadn't been required to wear a body camera?

I want to understand the protocol for body cam footage and how it becomes released. Seems like this puts the officer in a bad light, so who released the footage and why? Is there a standard in place for releasing body cam video? How does it normally come into the hands of the public?

I am not defending or praising the officer...I am genuinely curious.

EDIT: Thanks, guys. I read up a bit on FOIA and have a much better understanding about that now.

Having worked for a local municipality IT: All the electronic information held by the city is public property. Emails, documents, videos; everything. When asked to release information, they are allowed to redact certain personal data points about citizens (such as SSNs) but they are obliged to release the requested information. This is because the public bought those servers, pays the employees, pays the bills to keep everything running, and therefore owns it all.

IANAL, but in most cases, body cam video falls is available through a FOIA request. Often times either the media will file a request or a defense attorney, victim, or individual involved in the incident will have access and release the video on their own. Same with dash cam video from police cruisers.

IIRC it's the result of an FOIA request

Are you under the impression hospital ER is not monitored?

Yes.

Probably on reddit.

Why did you create this account just to post these comments? Why is this so important for you to criticize?

HN is community-driven. This happens to be something that was posted and upvoted a lot, showing that the community enjoys this content.

Well gee, I'm thoroughly outraged. Anyone else totally outraged right now? I am. Good job, Washington Post. See everyone back here tomorrow for more outrage? Okay then.

Why get outraged, when you can just stick your head in the sand?

Because outrage is viral. Don't you know?

So is sticking your head in the sand—everyone is doing it!

Really?! I'm always out of the loop. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Come on, you guys aren't outraged? It's outrageous.

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