US Nurse Arrested for Not Letting Cops Draw Blood Without Warrant
The nurse had told the police that they would need a warrant or seek the patient’s consent to take a blood sample.
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A nurse at a Utah hospital in US 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 26 July 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.
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."
He then dragged Wubbels outside as she screamed.
"This cop bullied me. He bullied me to the utmost extreme," Wubbels said in an interview with The Associated Press. "And nobody stood in his way."
Payne wrote in a police report that he grabbed Wubbels and took her outside to avoid causing a "scene" in the emergency room. He said his boss, a lieutenant whose actions also were being reviewed, told him to arrest Wubbels if she kept interfering.
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 apologised. Payne was suspended from blood-collecting duties while an internal investigation was being conducted, Brown said.
(With inputs from Reuters and AP)