Charge Nurse Arrested For Refusing Police Request

Celia Cyanide · Sep 2, 2017

Jan74 said:
What I'm getting at is somebody should have stepped in, the nurse herself stated ""I was being bullied and nobody was willing to speak up for me" I think that is horrible and never should have happened. Somebody UP the chain should have intervened and not via telephone. I don't believe that officer would have arrested a Doctor if a Doctor had intervened and backed her up. Nurses put up with a shitload of abuse everyday, I see it all the time nurses getting treated horribly yet the Doctor is treated with respect. Its a common problem and the majority of nurses will experience some form of abuse in her career.

You are right about this, however, since a nurse is responsible for blood draws, a doctor would not have intervened unless someone told him or her to do so. I don't think they would have arrested a doctor. I would almost say, I know they wouldn't. But it was her duty they were challenging, not the doctor's.

cornflake · Sep 2, 2017

Twick said:
This is another case of "she was warned, she was given an explanation, but nevertheless she persisted."

The fact that she was released in 20 minutes with no charges is *clear* evidence that this was a power play, not a genuine belief that she was violating the law. In any case, even if they believed they were correct, there was no indication of any tolerance for a fellow professional who believed *she* was correct as well. Just "here's what happens to you if you step out of line with us. It's not nice."

Yeah, which you can tell because he got pissed enough to grab her when he was told, by a woman (the one on the phone), that he's making a mistake threatening a nurse. That's what clearly gets his hackles up, the (I don't have the exact quote in front of me) 'you're making a big mistake... you're threatening a nurse.' That's the kind of language cops use about people encroaching on a cop. Turning it on him, suggesting he couldn't do something, especially I do think, as it was both a woman warning him off and a woman telling him no, and that he was being told he couldn't threaten, whatever about it got him, got him.

efreysson · Sep 2, 2017

I honestly try to believe that American law enforcement doesn't either attract sociopathic, sub-normal dregs of humanity with Donald Trump-esque vicious sensitivity, or gradually turn people that way through a culture that encourages stuff like this, a system that lets them get away with it, and the proven effects of power on human beings...

... but year after year of reports like this make it hard.

In some ways I never stopped being an angry teenager.

MaeZe · Sep 2, 2017

cornflake said:
...
Still primarily on the cop who physically assaulted and arrested her, imo. He was not obliged to break the law just because a superiour told him to.

Just noting the irony here. If the cop did not readily agree to arrest her (though I believe he did agree by his comment, "we're done here"), the nurse stood up for the law and her responsibilities, the cop caved and didn't.

Luciferical · Sep 2, 2017

Jan74 said:
Yep, and had a few more nurses and medical staff stood up for her I'm willing to bet the outcome would have been different. I can see the headline now "Entire nursing staff on burn unit arrested and unit left with no staff." Strength in numbers, if one person had stood up for her it would have made a difference. Can you see this officer arresting a doctor? Doubtful. Another instance of a nurse being abused while on the job.

I'm not sure who was physically present in that room while this was going on, but I know that several levels of management and administration were called at the time of this incident, and all tried to make it clear that the nurse was in the right. The officer simply ignored that. Or, more accurately, chose to proceed anyway.

I think the story I posted in the OP says the hospital administration, too, has taken issue with the inaction of University of Utah police who were there and did not act.

Policies get out of synch sometimes. I don't have a major beef with that. But everything I've read from police sources tells me that everyone on the law enforcement side of this was fixated solely on what they wanted, and no one was going to deny them. What I called the presumption of authority.

That doesn't come from a rogue officer. That's a cultural thing. And it needs to end.

Clairels · Sep 2, 2017

talktidy said:
As a Brit looking at this from across the pond, I am interested to know whether anyone thinks this cop will be fired.

This happened back in July, and the only reason they're taking any action now is because the body-cam video was just now released and created a public uproar. They claim to be "investigating," but they are clearly not interested in punishing this guy to any extent. He's still on duty.

The nurse has hired a lawyer, however.

Ambrosia · Sep 2, 2017

cornflake said:
Still primarily on the cop who physically assaulted and arrested her, imo. He was not obliged to break the law just because a superiour told him to.

I think another cop in his position might do the exact same thing when his watch commander tells him to and I think it is a little too easy to only see the guilt of the cop in this instance, because he was the one there, and not see the systemic problem. I'm not saying the cop isn't guilty for what he did. I'm saying his watch commander has the greater culpability for telling him to do it.

It's not easy to say no to one's superior. Not that I believe Payne had any problem with the order, mind. But he would have justification to follow the order of his watch commander, which is probably why he was removed from the blood draw unit and not removed from service. Following orders is what he's supposed to do in that situation in the normal course of the work day if there is a question on proceeding with carrying out his duties. He may have believed his watch commander knew what the hell he was talking about and thought he was right in his actions.

Roxxsmom · Sep 2, 2017

Jan74 said:
WI don't believe that officer would have arrested a Doctor if a Doctor had intervened and backed her up. Nurses put up with a shitload of abuse everyday, I see it all the time nurses getting treated horribly yet the Doctor is treated with respect.

This is possible, as doctors are generally held in more respect than nurses by the uninitiated, even though it's not warranted. But what if a doctor had shown up and they had been female, or black? Would the cop have shown more respect then? We don't know, obviously, but that hospital policy in many US states gives nurses the right and responsibility to intervene doesn't change a thing: this cop overstepped his authority and abused his power. This is a common problem in the US, and blaming hospital policy for what happened seems a bit specious to me.

Cops can be wrong. We have laws in this country (and I'm sure they do in Canada as well) that limit their powers and that dictate how they behave when obtaining evidence. This cop clearly violated those. I don't know why someone always feels compelled to explain their behavior away or to victim blame when cops become abusive, stressing how the victims should have/could have behaved to prevent the cop from running amok when the police officer, and possibly the hierarchy within their own department, are solely to blame. I'm not saying this is your intent, but this is how it reads.

Its a common problem and the majority of nurses will experience some form of abuse in her career.

This is undoubtedly true, since they are the ones who spend the most time with patients and the public in general, but abuse (and arrest) at the hands of police for doing one's job correctly is a very special case. The blame rests solely with the police. Changing hospital policies, or changing the laws about which rights and responsibilities nurses have, won't change the fact that many cops are on power trips and think they are above the law.

It's police culture that needs to change, not hospital culture.

Somebody should have stepped in and I believe that entire scenario would have played out differently.

Possibly, and if I were a betting woman, I'd wager that there are meetings being held in this hospital, and in hospitals around the country, where management is discussing how their staff should deal with incidents like this in the future. This story is newsworthy, in an era where police brutality is nearly an everyday thing, because it's pretty unprecedented. I can't think of an incident where a cop has arrested a nurse for doing their job before.

Frankly it pisses me off that nobody assisted her I can't imagine that happening at the hospital I used to work at, in fact I'm willing to bet it wouldn't since it wouldn't be one person alone defending the patients rights.

It sounds like you're focused on what might have been wrong at the hospital, in terms of dealing with an unprecedented situation that no one likely anticipated. Out of control patients or patients' loved ones are one thing, but who expects abusive cops in an ER?

Maybe things would have played out differently in your workplace, had an situation arisen. But in a world where it's possible for different people to read the same news story and to miss different essential details (like the truck driver not being the person who caused the accident), we can all miss or focus on different details within a story. And none of us were there. Things can happen very quickly, and in an after-hours situation in a very chaotic setting (an ER), there may not have been time to get the hospital supervisor (or whoever) involved.

And in the US, cops can and do beat, or even shoot, people who interfere with them in any way. They tend to not be charged, or to be acquitted, for/of homicide when they do so, because (as has been explained to me over and over, including within these forums) cops have to make split second decisions where lives are at stake, and in a society where anyone can be armed, they never know for sure who might be a threat. So even if someone was later determined to be unarmed, the cops are generally considered to have been acting reasonably in a court of law.

Most Americans know this, and we're scared to death of cops. Some of us are pissing-down-our-own-leg scared when cops start tossing their "authority" around. What if someone had been civilly disobedient and stepped in to stop the cop when he was dragging her of? What if the cop had shot someone? Would people then be blaming the person who stepped in for not allowing the poor nurse to be dragged off to the police department where things could be sorted out legally?

Tazlima · Sep 2, 2017

Roxxsmom said:
This is possible, as doctors are generally held in more respect than nurses by the uninitiated, even though it's not warranted. But what if a doctor had shown up and they had been female, or black? Would the cop have shown more respect then? We don't know, obviously, but that hospital policy in many US states gives nurses the right and responsibility to intervene doesn't change a thing: this cop overstepped his authority and abused his power. This is a common problem in the US, and blaming hospital policy for what happened seems a bit specious to me.

Cops can be wrong. We have laws in this country (and I'm sure they do in Canada as well) that limit their powers and that dictate how they behave when obtaining evidence. This cop clearly violated those. I don't know why someone always feels compelled to explain their behavior away or to victim blame when cops become abusive, stressing how the victims should have/could have behaved to prevent the cop from running amok when the police officer, and possibly the hierarchy within their own department, are solely to blame. I'm not saying this is your intent, but this is how it reads.

This is undoubtedly true, since they are the ones who spend the most time with patients and the public in general, but abuse (and arrest) at the hands of police for doing one's job correctly is a very special case. The blame rests solely with the police. Changing hospital policies, or changing the laws about which rights and responsibilities nurses have, won't change the fact that many cops are on power trips and think they are above the law.

It's police culture that needs to change, not hospital culture.

Possibly, and if I were a betting woman, I'd wager that there are meetings being held in this hospital, and in hospitals around the country, where management is discussing how their staff should deal with incidents like this in the future. This story is newsworthy, in an era where police brutality is nearly an everyday thing, because it's pretty unprecedented. I can't think of an incident where a cop has arrested a nurse for doing their job before.

It sounds like you're focused on what might have been wrong at the hospital, in terms of dealing with an unprecedented situation that no one likely anticipated. Out of control patients or patients' loved ones are one thing, but who expects abusive cops in an ER?

Maybe things would have played out differently in your workplace, had an situation arisen. But in a world where it's possible for different people to read the same news story and to miss different essential details (like the truck driver not being the person who caused the accident), we can all miss or focus on different details within a story. And none of us were there. Things can happen very quickly, and in an after-hours situation in a very chaotic setting (an ER), there may not have been time to get the hospital supervisor (or whoever) involved.

And in the US, cops can and do beat, or even shoot, people who interfere with them in any way. They tend to not be charged, or to be acquitted, for/of homicide when they do so, because (as has been explained to me over and over, including within these forums) cops have to make split second decisions where lives are at stake, and in a society where anyone can be armed, they never know for sure who might be a threat. So even if someone was later determined to be unarmed, the cops are generally considered to have been acting reasonably in a court of law.

Most Americans know this, and we're scared to death of cops. Some of us are pissing-down-our-own-leg scared when cops start tossing their "authority" around. What if someone had been civilly disobedient and stepped in to stop the cop when he was dragging her of? What if the cop had shot someone? Would people then be blaming the person who stepped in for not allowing the poor nurse to be dragged off to the police department where things could be sorted out legally?

My thoughts exactly. I've been waiting for someone trot out the old, "yeah, he can't do that, but she should have just complied and then complained later," nonsense that gets brought up every time an LEO is clearly making an illegal request and things end badly. People treat cops like armed and deadly, toddlers that will throw a tantrum if they're told "no."

If he'd gone off the rails and killed her, I guarantee that would be the narrative. "A blood sample isn't worth dying for." Except, of course, that it wasn't about the blood sample. It was about protecting someone's rights... and rights ARE worth dying to defend, let alone standing up for when dealing with what should not be a deadly situation.

As someone said above, this is how how behaved on film, in a professional setting. I'm sure he toned down his behavior from how he might have treated, say, a suspect who had the nerve to calmly refuse to permit an illegal search.

Twick · Sep 2, 2017

As far as "why didn't anyone react?" I can think of several reasons, from being frozen in shock at the sudden escalation to fear of making things get even worse. What if someone had tried to intervene, and Officer Payne had considered himself under physical threat? Then we might have had a shooting as well as an assault.

There is something very wrong with policing in North America. Police have to be trained in de-escalation. They have to develop a mindset that they've done a good job when things don't get violent, and have failed if they do.

Luciferical · Sep 2, 2017

Two things:
1) There was no "split-second" here. This was a confrontation that took place over the course of an hour (from what I understand), PLUS the 20 minutes she sat in his car, cuffed. Cops have to deal with split-second decisions all the time. But this one wasn't urgent in the least.

2) From what I understand, this nurse did not stand alone. The administration and management may or may not have been physically present, but the local story to which I linked said that several levels of management and administration were on the phone at one time or another, all backing up what this nurse kept telling the officer.

I frankly don't care in the least where the ER doctor was/were. Nor administrators. THIS WAS NOT EVEN A CLOSE CALL. The policy makes complete sense on Fourth Amendment grounds, and I have no reason AT ALL to believe the officer could not see that. He CHOSE to ignore it. He CHOSE to focus entirely in his own perception of authority.

And I agree on the other point, that police and Salt Lake City administration made no effort whatsoever to mitigate or remedy this until it became a news story.

This story is not about a policy that failed to stay in synch between two agencies. Not for me it isn't. I feel like I cannot say it often enough: Presumption of Authority. That's what this is about to me.

cornflake · Sep 2, 2017

Ambrosia said:
I think another cop in his position might do the exact same thing when his watch commander tells him to and I think it is a little too easy to only see the guilt of the cop in this instance, because he was the one there, and not see the systemic problem. I'm not saying the cop isn't guilty for what he did. I'm saying his watch commander has the greater culpability for telling him to do it.

It's not easy to say no to one's superior. Not that I believe Payne had any problem with the order, mind. But he would have justification to follow the order of his watch commander, which is probably why he was removed from the blood draw unit and not removed from service. Following orders is what he's supposed to do in that situation in the normal course of the work day if there is a question on proceeding with carrying out his duties. He may have believed his watch commander knew what the hell he was talking about and thought he was right in his actions.

I agree it's not easy to say no to one's superiour, but cops are (at least they're supposed to be) trained to. If you're given an unlawful order, you don't do that. Departments, academies, and requirements for both vary hugely in this country, which is another problem. In my city, you need two years of college to apply, and the academy is a 6-month deal, including plenty of classroom time going over the law of the land, the city, your responsibilities to the public, etc., and we still get cops doing unbelievable shit (though given the size of the force, it's likely not near what it would be without the requirements).

I know of places 20 miles from here that hire out of h.s., even with a GED, and have feeder academies to several towns that have like 6-week courses.

Salt Lake City is no tiny backwater with two cops; he's a detective, which means he's been a cop for a damn while, been promoted and passed more than one standardized policing exam, and what he did -- at the behest of a superiour or not -- were not things in violation of obscure regulations. He was asking to violate the Fourth Amendment. Not only that, but he had hospital policy on the matter, which his department had formally agreed to uphold, printed out and handed to him.

If his supervisor insisted, he had a very easy out: Sir, they handed me a written policy they say we signed off on on X date. By the way, this also totally violates the Fourth Amendment, you know, also.

It's not a questionable thing.

cmhbob · Sep 2, 2017

Totally in agreement with cornflake here (mark this date!). I've got a problem with every single cop involved in this mess, from the moron who cuffed her (way harder than he needed to) to the cretins who stood around and let it happen. There was no urgency or exigency here that deserved this level of violence. I want the detective fired, his supervisor demoted, and every other officer there to get some sort of official reprimand in their file.

Edit: hearing now that another (unidentified ATM) officer has been suspended. I hope it's the supervisor.

Jan74 · Sep 2, 2017

It's very sad to hear that in the United States you*general* you, are in fear of the police. My father was a sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police so I was raised in a home with the utmost respect for officers, and that carries forward to this day. I'm not fearful of them, however in Canada our relationship, depending on where you live is obviously different from the USA. From my knowledge, and I'm having coffee with my father tomorrow morning so I will ask him, is if there is a fatality everyone involved would have blood work done at the hospital on arrival and the police would be given the results relating to alcohol levels. But I've never been an ER nurse and I don't have first hand knowledge of how this would play out regarding police authority. Most likely they would get a warrant for the results of that blood work.

I stand by my opinion that bad things happen when good people stand by and do nothing. And we should learn from history why its important to NOT stand by and do nothing. If one of my co-workers is going to get carted off to jail, then hey, maybe she needs some company, but that's the union girl in me, all for one and one for all.

Jan74 · Sep 2, 2017

Celia Cyanide said:
You are right about this, however, since a nurse is responsible for blood draws, a doctor would not have intervened unless someone told him or her to do so. I don't think they would have arrested a doctor. I would almost say, I know they wouldn't. But it was her duty they were challenging, not the doctor's.

Nurses don't do blood draws in the hospital, the lab tech comes to the unit and does them, but she/he needs a doctors order to do this. In home care nurses do blood draws. From my understanding the nurse was obstructing the officer attempting to the blood draw. Again, where I am the police don't do blood draws so this scenario wouldn't happen. The doctor oversees the care of the patient and is the one who decides what tests, meds and work ups are going to be done, the nurse can recommend procedures but they can't order them. This is why I believe the Doctor should have been called in. Someone higher in authority to back her up.

At the end of the day, this officer should have gotten a warrant to avoid all the drama and I hope the nurse sues. Too many times nurses get trampled over and abused, usually its by patients and families taking out their frustrations, when 9x out of 10 they really want to yell at the doctor but the nurse gets the brunt of it.

James D. Macdonald · Sep 2, 2017

Noted in one news story, but not remarked on here: Detective Payne is also a paramedic:

Payne also works as a paramedic for Gold Cross Ambulance Service and was even dropping off patients at University Hospital Friday morning.

Mike Moffitt, Gold Cross president, said Payne was also placed on paid leave from that company Friday based on his statements in the video in which the detective talks to another officer about transporting homeless patients to University Hospital while "good" patients are taken elsewhere.

Moffitt said Payne is a longtime employee with the company and a "great paramedic."

"He doesn't have anything like this in his history," Moffitt said.

cornflake · Sep 2, 2017

Jan74 said:
It's very sad to hear that in the United States you*general* you, are in fear of the police. My father was a sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police so I was raised in a home with the utmost respect for officers, and that carries forward to this day. I'm not fearful of them, however in Canada our relationship, depending on where you live is obviously different from the USA. From my knowledge, and I'm having coffee with my father tomorrow morning so I will ask him, is if there is a fatality everyone involved would have blood work done at the hospital on arrival and the police would be given the results relating to alcohol levels. But I've never been an ER nurse and I don't have first hand knowledge of how this would play out regarding police authority. Most likely they would get a warrant for the results of that blood work.

I stand by my opinion that bad things happen when good people stand by and do nothing. And we should learn from history why its important to NOT stand by and do nothing. If one of my co-workers is going to get carted off to jail, then hey, maybe she needs some company, but that's the union girl in me, all for one and one for all.

In principle, on the latter, I agree with you. In the exigent circumstance, in which a cop insisting on breaking the law has lost his shit, picked up the charge nurse and bodily wrestled her off, telling her she's under arrest, as she struggles and cries out, I would not be rushing to get into that, for her safety and my own. If we were at a protest and she was being arrested by cops who were saying 'you'll be arrested for blocking access if you don't move,' fine, I'm linking arms and going limp and they'll break out the zip ties, no harm, no foul.

If someone who is supposed to be rational is acting irrationally has escalated the situation to physical violence and threats, without any provocation, and is btw, armed, no, I'm not getting near him. I don't think it's going to help her to insert myself. It may escalate his irrational and physically aggressive reaction further. I will grab the closest other cop I see and go to town on that he needs to get a grip on his unhinged colleague as I dial the ACLU with my other hand, but I'm not going near the guy just picked up a nurse like she was lawn furniture and carried her off, nope. Not a good plan.

rugcat · Sep 2, 2017

cmhbob said:
Totally in agreement with cornflake here (mark this date!). I've got a problem with every single cop involved in this mess, from the moron who cuffed her (way harder than he needed to) to the cretins who stood around and let it happen. There was no urgency or exigency here that deserved this level of violence. I want the detective fired, his supervisor demoted, and every other officer there to get some sort of official reprimand in their file.

Edit: hearing now that another (unidentified ATM) officer has been suspended. I hope it's the supervisor.

One thing to take note of is the complete pointlessness of arresting the nurse. The aim of the detective was to obtain a blood draw from the victim of the accident. Arresting the nurse did absolutely nothing to further that aim; in fact it made it even less attainable.

Even if the officer had law on his side, which he didn't, it was stupid. If he felt strongly enough, he should've presented the case to the county attorney's office to ask for a warrant to be issued for obstructing an officer. There was no need to make an arrest on the spot, because it served absolutely no purpose.

This arrest was a result of frustration that things weren't going the way he wanted them to. It's hard to believe that the watch commander (or field commander as they call it in Salt Lake City) told him to arrest the woman. The field commander is always a lieutenant, and is the highest ranking officer in charge of all field operations during the time when the top brass are not in service -- weekends, afternoons, and evenings, for example.

A field commander needs to be knowledgeable, levelheaded, and on top of every situation. The ones I worked for we're almost uniformly excellent. The field commander's actions here are incomprehensible to me.

As far as refusing a superiors orders, police departments are paramilitary organizations. They have to be – you can't have each individual officer deciding whether or not a superior's order is appropriate or lawful. Were that the case, it would be total chaos.

Obviously, an officer does not need to obey a clearly unlawful order – if a lieutenant or captain tells you to punch a handcuffed prisoner in the face, you're not going to do that.

But this apparently was a case where there was some discussion. It seems pretty clear that the officer did not have the authority to demand the blood be drawn, but at the time it might not have been so obvious. That's why you contact a superior officer and ask for guidance – and when the superior officer tells you to go ahead and do something, you do it, even if you personally disagree with the superiors logic. If things turn out badly, it's the superior officer's fault, not yours.

That said, from the video it is clear that this particular officer was angry and frustrated and acted like a total asshat.

I also think it's clear that the officer realized very quickly he'd made a bad mistake. The nurse was not booked or charged with any crime, but simply held in the back of a police car for 20 minutes, then unhandcuffed and released. Unarrested, in other words. You don't do that unless you realize you've screwed up royally.

blacbird · Sep 2, 2017

The arresting cop (at least) is now under criminal investigation. His career in law enforcement is over. It could get worse for him. And for the police bystanders, who did nothing to stop this absurdity.

caw

MaeZe · Sep 2, 2017

Jan74 said:
Nurses don't do blood draws in the hospital, the lab tech comes to the unit and does them, but she/he needs a doctors order to do this. In home care nurses do blood draws.

That depends on the hospital. The recovery room and OR nurses do a lot of blood draws for me.

But the story is muddled whether the cop wanted the nurse to draw the blood or just give him access to the patient. It seems less than relevant either way.

Jan74 said:
... the nurse can recommend procedures but they can't order them. This is why I believe the Doctor should have been called in. Someone higher in authority to back her up.

Employee health nurses order blood draws when employees are exposed to blood, infection prevention nurses order cultures when investigating outbreaks, ED nurses implement standing orders that include blood draws, and a lot of nurses do courtesy blood draws for me when I'm providing contracted employee health services for their institutions or for employees in the police and EMS professions when the source patient ends up in the nurse's ED or hospital. They do not need the physician or mid-level practitioner to write an order in the patient's chart. Like you said, there are different standards in different countries and states.

Jan74 said:
... At the end of the day, this officer should have gotten a warrant to avoid all the drama

Again, here we agree.

Technophobe · Sep 2, 2017

What this guy's intentions were in getting a blood sample, I don't know. What I do know, is arresting that nurse had nothing to do with blood samples. It was about asserting dominance. The anger in his voice, you can practically hear the "how dare this little bitch get in my way!? Who the fuck does she think she is!? I'll show her!" When he first moves to arrest her his open right had comes up in such a way that for a second I legit thought he was going to slap her across the face in front of god and everyone.

And if he was "told" to arrest her, that actually makes it worse, because an uninvolved supervisor basically decided to make an example of someone who defied the police's desire to break the law to get what they wanted.

It also gave me a chilling realization: I (a woman of color, for the record) don't have to be a suspect. If I come in contact with law enforcement for any reason, it could end with me being on the wrong end of abuse, and if I survive, I probably won't see any justice for it. And I was raised to believe the police were the good guys, that if I needed help I could go to them and be helped, but now I can see why people who have never done anything wrong might be reluctant to get police involved. This... this isn't a good feeling for me. Not at all.

This along with the current political situation has me feeling pretty damn hopeless. I honestly want to just stop my news intake altogether, but I'm also afraid that if I do I'll miss something important that pertains to me or my mom.

Luciferical · Sep 2, 2017

blacbird said:
The arresting cop (at least) is now under criminal investigation. His career in law enforcement is over. It could get worse for him. And for the police bystanders, who did nothing to stop this absurdity.

caw

I wish I could believe that.

For the record, I have no bad feelings about the officer on an individual level. I'm thinking of what it's going to take to disassemble a system that keeps permitting (and, in my view, encouraging) this kind of behaior.

regdog · Sep 2, 2017

I think one reason Payne reacted the way he did comes from the transcript. He was really angry with being kept waiting for an hour. When Wubbles apologized to him for the wait he snapped "No, you're not." Something tells me, he expected to be attended to and have his request addressed immediately and not have to sit around. Perhaps if he had used that hour to obtain a warrant his hour would have been well spent.

James D. Macdonald said:
Noted in one news story, but not remarked on here: Detective Payne is also a paramedic:

Anyone who works in the medical field and has such a blatant disregard for HIPPA should have heir license stripped, and if they don't have a license, they should be barred from employment in health care.

waylander · Sep 3, 2017

As a paramedic and, I believe, a phlebetomy officer, Payne should be complelety familiar with the law around blood samples. He has to have known he was in the wrong at the way.

CWatts · Sep 3, 2017

Technophobe said:
What this guy's intentions were in getting a blood sample, I don't know. What I do know, is arresting that nurse had nothing to do with blood samples. It was about asserting dominance. The anger in his voice, you can practically hear the "how dare this little bitch get in my way!? Who the fuck does she think she is!? I'll show her!" When he first moves to arrest her his open right had comes up in such a way that for a second I legit thought he was going to slap her across the face in front of god and everyone.

I think this is key. Studies have shown that police families have domestic violence rates two to four times higher than the general population. https://www.theatlantic.com/nationa...rs-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/

So many of these situations appear to escalate the same way an abuse situation does with the abuser losing his shit over some small thing. Some of it could be the personalities drawn to law enforcement, some could be a response to the stress of the job. Plus I would imagine these rates impact even the majority of officers who don't abuse, because it creates a culture where abuse is normalized.

Charge Nurse Arrested For Refusing Police Request

Celia Cyanide

Joker Groupie

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

efreysson

Closer than ever

MaeZe

Luciferical

Clairels

Born at sea

Ambrosia

Grand Duchess

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

Tazlima

Twick

Luciferical

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

cmhbob

Did...did I do that?

Jan74

Jan74

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

rugcat

Lost in the Fog

blacbird

MaeZe

Technophobe

Luciferical

regdog

The Scavengers

waylander

Who's going for a beer?

CWatts

down the rabbit hole of research...