THIS. Expecting indifferently-paid and often-overworked pharmacist assistants, clerks, etc. to stand up to law enforcement - who can easily be armed, uniformed, belligerent, and right in their faces - is cruel and delusional.
Imagine how much more difficult it would be to resist this when you're a clerk in a retail store working in public.
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/321440980fd54809a5bf8e404cfe4367
(Edited to add context)
Jeff Payne, the Utah cop who was fired after his violent arrest of that nurse went viral, later got hired by the Weber County Sheriff’s Office to work in the medical unit of the county jail.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act....
And for that matter, I doubt the video store law applies to bookstores.
(A judge confirmation process ran in trouble because of video rental records - so a law was written ... which addresses only video rental. For maximum inefficiency or something.)
My wife is an ER charge nurse, and she often complains about the behavior of cops in the emergency room. They have someone on the edge of death and the cops often are in the room yelling at the nurses to get them to do a blood draw and drug screening.
Cops need a warrant to get that, and even if they had a warrant in hand, performing the blood draw wouldn't even be considered until the patient is stabilized. But they never have a warrant, and the pressure the cops apply is withering. Most people -- even doctors and nurses -- would eventually cave.
Fortunately, as the charge nurse, she's the one who has to approve such a thing, so the cops have to deal with her. And she's hard as a rock. They aren't going to make her wilt.
The behavior you describe is that of a spoiled child, used to getting what it wants immediately by throwing an abusive tantrum, consequences to others and rules be damned. Same reason they execute PIT maneuvers on busy roads, lead high speed chases through the middle of towns, and empty full magazines into densely populated areas, all things that police in other countries are trained not to do, trained to be patient and follow instead. They want it now, and anyone hurt along the way is just a casualty of war, not their problem or responsibility.
This is exactly how she describes them. "Spoiled brats with guns".
“Here’s the phone number to corporate who is, by this policy, the only ones equipped and permitted to satisfy your request.” This also makes it so you don’t even send a car out anymore, but can handle the request electronically from the station.
2023 United States baby. Land of the free.
The parent post specifically says that it wold be company policy, so that wouldn't apply.
>> It seems like a well-drafted company policy posted and pointed to by the local store staff would be the right way to back up their customers and staff.
Instead of the Mayor, the Sheriff will go to some State Rep or congressperson and the same results happen.
I've seen similar moves play out in the past in real life
If every local sheriff can intimidate and bully a local pharmacist to get the information it's very different than if you need a congress person to call in a favor with supposedly one of the few people who have access to the information.
Not new…I’ve been disheartened about this for 35 years at least.
At that point, the company itself is under scrutiny in the public eye. They can't blame their front-line staff.
A tale as old as the first police union: when the city tried to reign them in, the Portland Police politely threatened to walk off the job and the chief (iirc) casually showed up to negotiations with a dossier on one of the city councilors just laid out on the table next to his gun.
Bullies are always going to bully. Roll-over-and-take-it is a terrible corporate strategy!
I expect everyone with access to personal data do the same.
Respecting privacy should be a tenant of law enforcement, since that’s like one of our rights or something, but cops and police unions have been operating outside of the law for their entire history in the US.
Obligatory ACAB
Police can rob you, rape you, or murder you in the street and even if it's caught on camera they can still face zero meaningful consequences for that. We've certainly seen it happen. They can also arrest you for something like "obstruction" or "contempt of cop" and that's something you'd have to spend time and money on fighting later in the courts. Ongoing retaliation is something else to be concerned about.
In any case, the can certainly do a lot besides "trying to frighten you"
This seems trivial to solve. Subpoenas get forwarded to corporate legal and they handle releasing of records.
It seems peculiar this isn't SOP now. Perhaps it's because pharmacists/managers cost less (in $ and accountability) than lawyers.
With this policy across chains, judges would be skeptical of a cop who tried to bully a local records release. Even a rogue cop could understand this reality.
They spend a vast sum of time, money and energy to gain a PharmD, then some asshat company puts them in situations where their licenses could be at risk?
Of course they do.
The state licensing boards are aware of the problem, and "neglect" to punish pharmacists who are caught in such situations with law enforcement.
Were I on the board of these companies, I'd be aghast and demand this clear operational issue, which threatens our capacity to provide pharmacy services long term, be remediated.
They sure af aren't going to toss me a lifetime check, when it happens.
Why do "indifferently-paid and often-overworked pharmacist assistants, clerks, etc." even have access to this? In the US any random pharmacy clerk has access to list of all drugs that customers have ever bought from them and also "medical records" (according to the article)? WTF?
Doing away with this safety net to.. avoid addressing police overreach directly is a bad idea.
Are there any stats for how many potentially lethal errors they actually catch in practice?
I'm struggling to understand the logic in wanting pharmacists to be more ignorant. Even if cops couldn't interrogate pharmacists because they were all blind and dumb, they'd go to local doctors instead. The police are the problem that needs to be addressed.
You made a statement, it is up to you to back it up.
> I know from personal experience that pharmacists do catch errors, but I have no clue if anybody is keeping statistics on it.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
> I'm struggling to understand the logic in wanting pharmacists to be more ignorant.
This is IT security 101 - the less randos have access to a sensitive data the better.
> Even if cops couldn't interrogate pharmacists because they were all blind and dumb, they'd go to local doctors instead.
In context of US situation I guess the benefit if when out-of-state telehealth doctor prescribes and local pharmacy clerks don't have access to those records. The best theoretical end game would be to either have such records on encrypted device owned by patient or none at all.
> The police are the problem that needs to be addressed.
Last decade or so the tendency has been to solve this by technical means, where possible. Like e2e encrypted messages, encrypted iCloud/Google backups, recent announcement of local Google maps timeline, etc.
Chances are, if any of them know about the medications you’re on that they didn’t prescribe, it’s because you self-disclosed on your intake form or told the nurse during intake verbally. This is not necessarily a great way to know for sure, because patients forget things and people write or type or select the wrong thing.
In this system, it’s much more reliable to have all the prescriptions flow down to one endpoint and have someone trained who can see the exact medications and dosages, and that person can then give the patient the relevant information they need at the time of service.
the argument is that pharmacists are a "last line of defense" against the fractured system or mistakes from doctors (or clerical errors etc) but their authority is absolutely not limited to correcting errors or double-checking with the doctor's office. In practice the pharmacists here are incredibly full of themselves, they'll refuse to dispense birth control, etc, and there is no duty for the pharmacy to ensure someone else will service you, they can just say "no" and that's it.
To give you an idea, in a nearby Walgreens, we have pharmacists snapping at customers saying "We got your prescription only two days ago. It's not going to be ready that quickly!"
Why can’t licensed pharmacy techs?
If so, Apples != Oranges